rs. 


Recorded 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


/ 


MRS.  FISKE 


An  impression  ot  Mrs.  Fiske  by  Ernest  Haskel 


MRS.  FISKE 

HER  VIEWS  ON  ACTORS,  ACTING, 

AND    THE    PROBLEMS 

OF  PRODUCTION 


RECORDED  BY 

ALEXANDER  WOOLCOTT 


WITH  PHOTOGRAPHS 


NEW  YORK 

THE  CENTURY  CO. 

1917 


Copyright,  1917,  by 
THE  CENTURY  Co. 


Published,  October,  1917 


College 
Library 

TAJ 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    AN  ASSAULT  ON  THE  REPERTORY  IDEA  .     .  3 

II    ON  IBSEN  THE  POPULAR 41 

III  To  THE  ACTOR  IN  THE  MAKING      ...  75 

IV  A  THEATER  IN  SPAIN 108 

V    GOING  TO  THE  PLAY 145 

VI    POSTSCRIPT 185 

VII    MARIE  AUGUSTA  DAVEY 199 


1568410 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

An  impression  of  Mrs.  Fiske  by  Ernest  Haskel 
Frontispiece 

Portrait  of  Mrs.  Fiske 5 

Mrs.  Fiske  as  Tess 16 

Mrs.  Fiske  as  Becky  Sharp 26 

Charles  Waldron  and  Mrs.  Fiske  in  the  first  scene 

of  Edward  Sheldon's  "The  High  Road"      .      .  35 

Mrs.  Fiske  as  Hedda 46 

"Mr.  Fiske  has  been  my  artistic  backbone  .  .  ."  55 

A  typical  page  from  Mrs.  Fiske's  prompt  copy 

of  an  Ibsen  play 65 

The  confession  scene  from  "Erstwhile  Susan"   .  71 

Mrs.  Fiske  as  Rebecca  West  in  "Rosmersholm"   .  78 

Mrs.  Fiske — 1917 91 

Mrs.  Fiske  as  Gilberti  in  "Frou-Frou"      .     .      .  102 

Salvation  Nell ill 

Minnie  Maddern  Fiske 121 

The  first  act  of  "Salvation  Nell"  (1908)  .      .      .  131 

Becky  Sharp 142 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

"Erstwhile  Susan" 151 

"When  I  remember  Duse.  ..." 161 

"Mary  of  Magdala" 168 

Mrs.  Fiske  as  Tess 177 

Mrs.  Fiske  as  Hannele  ........  191 

Mrs.  Fiske  at  four          .     ^. 206 

Minnie  Maddern  at  sixteen 211 

An  early  folder 217 

Minnie  Maddern  shortly  before  her  retirement 
from  the  stage 223 


MRS.  FISKE 


MRS.  FISKE 


AN    ASSAULT    ON    THE    REPERTORY    IDEA 

T  TEDDA  G ABLER  sat  just  across  the 
J.  JL  table  from  me  at  supper  after  the  play. 
It  was  all  very  well  for  Grant  Allen  in  his 
day  to  say  that  Hedda  was  "nothing  more  or 
less  than  the  girl  we  take  down  to  dinner  in 
London  nineteen  times  out  of  twenty."  Cer- 
tainly she  was  something  more  this  time,  for 
Tess  of  the  D'Urbervilles — not  Hardy's  Tess, 
perhaps,  but  ours — sat  there,  too.  I  was  at 
supper  with  Hedda  and  Tess  and  Becky 
Sharp,  but  surely  that  was  Becky's  red  hair  that 
could  be  glimpsed  in  the  shadow  of  the  big  hat 
and  voluminous  veil.  That  erect  figure,  vital, 
alert,  indefatigable,  eloquently  animate,  surely 
that  was  Becky.  There  was  something  of 
Becky,  also,  in  the  mutinous,  gleaming  humor, 

3 


MRS.  FISKE 

and  a  little  something  of  Cynthia  Karslake, 
stepping  forth  briskly  from  the  pages  of  Lang- 
don  Mitchell's  glittering  comedy.  Then  there 
was  my  dear  friend  Mrs.  Bumpstead-Leigh,  or 
at  least  her  unmistakable  lorgnette,  not  wielded 
now  for  the  abashed  discomfiture  of  others,  but 
flirted  and  brandished,  like  the  fan  and  the 
morsel  of  a  handkerchief,  just  to  enforce  a  few 
of  the  more  fervent  gestures — those  vivid,  ar- 
resting gestures  which  so  emphasize  and  under- 
score a  speech  that,  when  you  wish  to  repeat  it  in 
black  and  white,  you  must  needs  out-Brisbane 
Brisbane  in  your  desperate  recourse  to  capitals 
or  italics.  In  the  utter  self-effacement  of  these 
enthusiasms  of  opinion,  as  we  talked  of  the 
theater,  there  were  the  accents  of  great  Lona 
Hessel,  and  in  the  deep  conviction,  the  all-per- 
suasive conviction,  something  of  Rebecca  West 
and  Salvation  Nell,  sweet  Nell  of  old  Cherry 
Hill.  It  was  not  merely  that  you  could  not 
choose  but  hear:  you  could  not  choose  but  be- 
lieve. She  could  say  "Bosh!"  for  instance, 
with  simply  devastating  effect.  In  fact,  she 
did. 

"Bosh!"  said  Mrs.  Fiske,  for  of  course  it 
Mrs.  Fiske,  "do  not  talk  to  me  about  the 

4 


Portrait  of  Mrs.  Fiske 


THE  REPERTORY  IDEA 

repertory  idea.  It  is  an  outworn,  needless,  im- 
possible, harmful  scheme." 

"I  gather,"  I  answered  brightly,  "that  you 
are  opposed  to  repertory." 

"I  am,  I  am  indeed.  In  all  my  days  in  the 
theater  I  have  never  encountered  such  a  pre- 
posterous will-o'-the-wisp.  This,  my  friend, 
is  an  age  of  specialization,  and  in  such  an  age 
the  repertory  theater  is  an  anachronism,  a  ludi- 
crous anachronism." 

"But  Mr.  Granville  Barker — and  he  is  really 
a  great  man — " 

"Ah,  yes,"  she  assented  cheerfully,  and  yet 
with  a  faintly  perceptible  undertone  of  res- 
ervation in  her  voice. 

"Well,  Mr.  Barker  not  only  carried  out  the 
repertory  idea  in  his  season  at  Wallack's,  but 
admitted  then  that  he  could  conceive  of  no 
other  kind  of  theater." 

"Exactly,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske,  in  triumph.  In- 
deed, she  quite  pounced  on  Mr.  Barker  and  on 
me.  I  suspect  she  had  been  waiting  for  us. 
"And  let  me  tell  you  that  nothing  more  harm- 
ful has  happened  in  the  American  theater  in 
years  than  the  Barker  season  at  Wallack's." 

Harmful*?  One  heard  many  unkind  things 
7 


MRS.  FISKE 

said  of  Mr.  Barker  at  the  time,  but  there  never 
had  been  the  suggestion  that  he  worked  an  evil 

Q-KL2 

spell.  Those  who  rejoiced  over  his  "Man  with 
a  Dumb  Wife"  never  suspected  him  later  of 
doing  harm  in  the  theater. 

"Harmful,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske — ''harmful 
and  pernicious.  One  play,  'Androcles  and  the 
Lion,'  Mr.  Barker  produced  perfectly.  It  was 
a  beautiful  achievement,  and  what  followed 
was  all  the  more  tragic  because  he  had  already 
shown  himself  a  master  of  his  art.  A  master. 
He  had  shown  us  how  splendidly  he  could  shine 
as  a  producer  if  only  he  would  be  a  specialist — 
a  specialist  like  several  of  our  own,  though  of 
the  greatest  value  to  us  all  because  the  loftier 
literature  of  the  theater  would  have  no  terrors 
for  Granville  Barker.  But  he  put  the  same 
company  through  the  paces  of  a  quite  different 
play  for  which  it  was  grotesquely  unfitted. 
That  is  the  essence  and  the  evil  of  the  repertory 
idea.  He  slaughtered  '  The  Doctor's  Di- 
lemma'— slaughtered  a  capital  play  before  our 
very  eyes  beyond  all  hope  of  a  resuscitation  in 
this  generation." 

In  particular,  as  she  recalled  that  evening, 
Mrs.  Fiske  saw  the  beautiful  role  of  the  wife 

8 


THE  REPERTORY  IDEA 

so  atrociously  played  that  she  wanted  to  rush 
from  the  theater  and  forget  that  it  had  ever 
happened.  And  what  specially  depressed  her 
was  the  evidence  of  the  very  harm  she  feared 
having  its  deadly  effect  on  her  own  ingenuous 
companion,  an  earnest  "student  of  the  drama," 
who  was  applauding  conscientiously  at  the  end 
of  each  act. 

"Why  the  applause*?"  asked  Mrs.  Fiske, 
coldly,  and  when  her  awestruck  guest  mur- 
mured something  about  Granville  Barker,  it 
was  more  than  she  could  bear.  She  had  told 
me  this  much  when  she  paused,  as  if  amused 
and  a  little  scandalized  by  one  of  her  own  mem- 
ories. But  what  her  reply  had  been  there  is  no 
telling  now,  for  she  wanted  to  explain  clearly 
just  why  she  felt  that  Mr.  Barker's  activities 
had  worked  "direct  mischief." 

"Mr.  Barker's  unfortunate  influence  was  the 
direct  result,  you  see,  of  the  importance  of  his 
position,  of  the  fact  that  he  was  supposed  to 
stand  for  what  was  good  in  the  theater.  When 
an  ordinary  manager" — she  named  one,  but  the 
reader  can  fill  in  to  suit  himself,  for  the  range 
of  choice  is  large — "when  an  ordinary  manager 
produces  a  play  badly,  even  very  badly,  he 

9 


MRS.  FISKE 

works  no  great  harm.  He  has  made  no  preten- 
sions to  what  is  idealistic  in  the  theater.  We 
have  not  taken  him  seriously.  But  Mr.  Barker 
is  not  an  ordinary  manager.  When  he  opened 
the  doors  of  Wallack's  the  public  was  invited 
to  come  and  see  something  fine  and  true,  some- 
thing representative  of  the  best.  We  were  told 
that  here  was  something  at  least  approaching 
the  realization  of  a  certain  ideal.  We  were 
told  that  we  should  be  safe  in  regarding  the  of- 
ferings of  the  Barker  system  as  offerings  in  good 
art,  things  real,  vital,  progressive;  things  to  set 
the  intellectual  pace;  something  like  a  stand- 
ard, a  model,  something  to  measure  by. 

"Now,  all  of  us  who  know  the  theater  know 
that  even  the  most  highly  intelligent  and  culti- 
vated people  are  for  the  most  part  mere  children 
there.  People  whose  understanding  and  taste 
in  literature,  painting,  and  music  are  beyond 
question  are,  for  the  most  part,  ignorant  of 
what  is  good  or  bad  art  in  the  theater.  This 
is  strange,  but  true;  and  it  always  has  been 
true.  I  shall  never  forget  the  first  time  I  saw 
Duse  in  'La  Locandiera.' "  Mrs.  Fiske's  eyes 
shone  as  they  always  shine  when  she  names  the 
greatest  lady  of  them  all.  "There,  my  friend, 

10 


THE  REPERTORY  IDEA 

was  probably  the  most  perfect  and  utterly  beau- 
tiful example  of  delicate  comedy  in  all  the 
world  of  acting  in  our  day,  yet  I  saw  the  per- 
formance in  the  company  of  a  highly  cultivated 
woman  who  was  excessively  bored  and  who 
missed  completely  the  marvelous  spirit  and  the 
astounding  revelation  of  technical  fluency  in 
that  matchless  performance." 

"But  The  Doctor's  Dilemma,' "  I  ventured. 

"Why,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske,  "the  public,  always 
so  easily  misled  in  the  theater,  had  been  led 
this  time  to  believe  the  Barker  production  good 
art,  whereas  in  truth  it  was  bad  art,  very  bad. 
That  several  of  the  parts  were  beautifully  acted 
could  not  for  a  moment  excuse  the  fact  that, 
considered  as  a  whole,  the  performance  was 
atrocious.  Yet  how  could  it  be  otherwise 
when  the  two  leading  parts,  Jennifer  Dubedat 
and  the  title  role,  were  completely  misrepre- 
sented'? Furthermore,  entire  scenes  in  the  play 
were  out  of  key  and  out  of  tempo.  Now  what 
should  we  say  of  an  opera  in  which  the  leading 
roles  were  abominably  sung  and  in  which  whole 
passages  were  out  of  key  and  out  of  tempo? 
Your  audience,  trained  to  music,  would  im- 
mediately recognize  the  extraordinary  defi- 

11 


MRS.  FISKE 

ciency  and  condemn  it.  In  the  case  of  'The 
Doctor's  Dilemma,'  however,  the  audience,  for 
the  most  part  untrained  in  dramatic  criticism, 
accepted  as  an  example  of  good  art  the  misrep- 
resentation, the  mutilation  of  a  splendid  play. 
So  the  mischief  was  worked,  and,  because  of  the 
very  conspicuousness  of  Mr.  Barker,  ignorance 
and  bad  taste  were  encouraged.  For  Mr. 
Barker  was  more  than  an  ordinary  manager :  he 
was  a  movement.  And  I  have  never  known  a 
'movement'  in  the  theater  that  did  not  work 
direct  and  serious  harm.  Indeed,  I  have  some- 
times felt  that  the  very  people  associated  with 
various  'uplifting'  activities  in  the  theater  are 
people  who  are  astoundingly  lacking  in  ideal- 
ism." 

I  could  not  help  luxuriating  then  in  the 
thought  of  certain  very  vocal  persons  over- 
hearing that  remark.  But  we  were  not  done 
with  Mr.  Barker. 

"He  was  a  movement,"  I  prompted. 

"But  how  many  knew  he  was  a  movement  in 
the  wrong  direction?" 

There  was  the  point.  How  many  knew*? 
We  were  agreed,  then,  that  all  growth  in  the 
theater  is  just  progress  in  the  recognition  of 

12 


THE  REPERTORY  IDEA 

what  is  good  and  what  is  bad,  of  what  is  right 
and  what  is  wrong — the  recognition  by  the 
playgoers,  that  is,  as  well  as  by  the  workers  on 
the  other  side  of  the  footlights.  It  is  the  slow 
upbuilding  of  a  public  for  good  art. 

"So  you  see,  my  friend,  we  have  had  nothing 
so  harmful  and  pernicious  befall  our  theater  in 
years  as  Granville  Barker's  season — unless — " 
and  here  Mrs.  Fiske  resorted  to  the  whisper 
used  by  those  in  imminent  danger  of  being 
shot  for  treason — "unless  it  was  the  New 
Theater." 

This  was  a  leap;  and  yet  it  was  natural  to 
move  from  the  sorry,  dismantled  Wallack's  to 
the  sumptuous  temple  that  overlooks  Central 
Park  from  the  west,  the  mausoleum  which  shel- 
tered at  first  and  for  a  little  time  the  most  am- 
bitious attempt  to  endow  drama  ever  made  in 
America.  It  is  no  longer  the  temple  of  the 
drama,  but  the  temple  of  the  chorus  girl.  The 
New  Theater  has  become  a  music  hall. 

"Whatever  the  fine  idealism,  the  unselfish- 
ness, the  splendid  and  genuine  philanthropy 
that  launched  the  New  Theater,"  said  Mrs. 
Fiske,  "it  was  headed  from  the  first  for  ship- 
wreck." 

13 


MRS.  FISKE 

"Even  had  the  building  been  right  and  the 
people  within  it  right?" 

"Even  then,"  she  went  on.     "There  was  one 
factor  bound  to  wreck  it." 

"And  that  one  factor — " 

"Repertory." 

This  is  worth  underscoring,  because  there  is 
little  reason  to  believe  that  many  of  those  who 
benevolently  launched  the  New  Theater  yet 
recognize  this  diagnosis  of  the  ills  of  which 
that  endeavor  perished.  It  is  certain  that  four 
years  after  the  New  Theater  closed  its  doors 
these  same  men  were  ready  to  endow  virtually 
the  same  scheme  under  the  directorship  of  Mr. 
Barker,  the  great  producer  from  overseas.  It 
is  equally  certain  that  even  after  Mr.  Barker's 
first  season  they  were  ready  to  establish  him 
here,  and  it  should  be  kept  in  mind  that  this 
project  failed  of  fulfilment  for  entirely  ad- 
ventitious and  personal  reasons.  It  would  be 
neither  tactful  nor  chivalrous  to  set  these  forth 
at  this  time.  Besides,  it  does  not  matter.  It 
is  important  to  remember  only  that  if  Mr. 
Barker  is  not  now  the  head  of  a  lavishly  en- 
dowed theater  in  New  York,  it  is  not  because 
of  any  recognized  flaws  in  his  theory  of  the 


Airs.  Fiske  as  Tess 


THE  REPERTORY  IDEA 

theater.  And  his  theory  of  the  theater  is 
repertory.  That  theory  is  apparently  still  in 
favor.  You  are  sure  to  hear  it  expounded  at 
every  luncheon  given  by  the  Society  for  the 
Gracious  Patronage  of  the  Drama.  The  very 
word  is  one  to  conjure  with  among  all  the  little 
putterers  in  the  theater. 

They  dream  of  an  American  Comedie  Fran- 
gaise.  They  yearn  for  an  institutional  play- 
house which  shall  have  a  fairly  fixed  company 
for  alternating  performances  of  good  plays, 
that  shall  provide  change  and  freshness  and 
much  experience  for  the  actor,  while  it  gives 
deserved,  but  unexpected,  longevity  to  master- 
pieces too  frail  and  precious,  perhaps,  to  fill  the 
auditorium  eight  times  a  week,  and  yet  well 
worth  nursing  along  in  repertory.  This  was 
the  theory  of  the  New  Theater;  this  is  Mr. 
Barker's  theory  of  the  theater.  It  is  not  Mrs. 
Fiske's. 

Her  heretical  and  quite  unfashionable  senti- 
ments on  the  subject  were  expressed  over  the 
supper-table  one  snowy  evening.  It  was  after 
the  performance  of  "Erstwhile  Susan"  at  a 
theater  "somewhere  in  the  United  States,"  and 


MRS.  FISKE 

this  is  only  the  memory  of  that  conversation. 
From  such  memories  alone — mine  and  others' 
— is  there  any  prospect  of  spreading  before  the 
reader  her  theory  of  the  theater;  for  in  all  the 
years  she  has  worked  in  it  she  has  written  no 
solemn  treatises,  spoken  seldom,  given  forth 
few,  if  any,  interviews,  and,  having  precious 
little  enthusiasm  for  the  past,  indulged  in  no 
reminiscences.  This  has  probably  been  due  to 
no  settled  policy  of  stately  silence,  but  rather 
to  the  overwhelming  impulse  of  evasion  every 
time  an  opportunity  has  arisen.  It  has  been 
due  a  little,  I  imagine,  to  a  feeling  that  as  long 
as  she  would  stage  and  play  a  piece,  no  more 
could  be  asked  of  her;  a  little,  too,  to  her  alert 
consciousness  of  the  absurd,  her  lively  horror 
of  seeming  to  take  herself  too  seriously.  There 
it  is — the  deep-seated  aversion  to  appearing  in 
any  degree  oracular.  Some  time  ago,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  there  had  been  a  vague  suggestion 
of  a  dignified  outgiving  in  which  I  was  to  con- 
spire; but  by  the  time  I  reached  the  place  ap- 
pointed the  impulse  had  passed  and  left  merely 
a  disarming,  but  impenetrable,  smile. 

"Who  am  I,  to  talk  about  the  theater*?"  she 
asked  that  time,  quite  as  though  I  had  suggested 

18 


THE  REPERTORY  IDEA 

it.  "How  can  I,  who  in  twenty  years  have 
done  upon  the  stage  so  much  of  which  I  cannot 
approve,  speak  now  as  producer,  as  stage-direc- 
tor, or  as  actress1?  Ah,  but  the  saving  grace  is 
that  Mr.  Fiske  and  I  have  made  no  pretensions, 
though  it  is  maddeningly  true  in  the  theater  that 
because  you  do  a  thing  people  will  insist  on  as- 
suming that  you  vouch  for  it.  Why,  I  have 
occasionally  acted  in  plays  that  I  could  not 
possibly  respect — played  night  after  night,  too, 
when  every  night  to  go  to  the  theater  was  a 
wearing,  aging  task.  Of  course  I  should  have 
refused  to  go  on.  I  should  have.  That  would 
have  been  the  right  thing  to  do.  I  should  have 
sailed  out  of  the  stifling  theater,  head  up  and 
free.  I  thought,  to  be  sure,  that  each  time  I 
had  good  reasons  for  going  on ;  but,"  she  added 
ruefully,  "I  dare  say  there  never  is  a  good  rea- 
son for  doing  wrong." 

"Of  course,"  she  resumed,  with  more  cheer- 
fulness, "while  it  is  quite  out  of  the  question 
to  speak  as  actress  or  producer, — I  place  no 
false  estimate  on  my  career  in  those  capacities, 
— I  might  say  something  as  a  dramatic  critic. 
I  think  I  am  a  safe  critic,  and  in  my  time  have 
been  a  bit  of  a  playgoer  myself.  But,  no," — 

19 


MRS.  FISKE 

this  with  a  dismaying  access  of  firmness, — 
"after  all,  there  is  nothing  to  talk  about." 

Thus  ended  that  project,  and  thus,  I  rather 
imagine,  has  ended  many  another  earlier  pro- 
ject of  the  same  nature.  Mrs.  Fiske's  theory 
of  the  theater,  then,  must  be  gathered  largely 
from  the  memories  of  unguarded  conversations 
— such  memories  as  these. 

So  this — one  of  several  I  must  recall  and  put 
on  paper  for  the  reader — was  a  conversation 
across  a  platter  that  contained,  as  I  remember, 
an  omelet,  which  refection  and  the  repertory 
idea  we  proceeded  to  demolish  at  some  length 
and  with  great  gusto.  We  approved  the  for- 
mer and  were  scornful  of  the  latter  as  an  im- 
possible scheme,  quite  impossible. 

"A  lovely  dream,  perhaps*?" 

"A  lovely  dream  that  cannot  come  true.  In 
the  first  place,  no  single  company,  even  though 
it  had  years  and  years  in  which  to  prepare, 
could  give  five  entirely  different  plays  and  give 
them  all  properly.  By  all  the  laws  of  chance 
a  company  suitable  for  one  would  destroy  the 
other  four.  It  is  grandiose  presumption  to  pre- 
tend that  a  repertory  theater  can  compete  ar- 
20 


THE  REPERTORY  IDEA 

tistically  with  such  a  production  as  Mr.  Belasco 
could  make  with  a  specially  selected  cast,  such 
a  production,  by  the  way,  as  he  came  close  to 
making  for  'Marie  Odile.'  There  were  only 
two  false  notes  in  'Marie  Odile.'  For  the  rest, 
an  ideal  was  realized  perfectly. 

"And  it  is  no  easy  task.  Let  me  tell  you 
that  only  once  in  twenty  years  have  Mr.  Fiske 
and  I  succeeded  in  achieving  what  to  me  was 
an  absolutely  perfect  performance.  Think  of 
that — only  once  in  twenty  years !  We  have,  I 
think,  several  times  approached  close  to  the 
ideal,  as  did  Mr.  Belasco  with  'Marie  Odile'; 
but  only  once  has  my  own  personal  critical 
sense  been  completely  satisfied  in  our  own  per- 
sonal effort. 

"That  satisfaction  came  to  me  in  our  first 
production  of  'Salvation  Nell.'  A  distin- 
guished critic  at  the  time  said  that  it  was  'in- 
credibly' well  acted.  He  was  right.  I  can 
hardly  tell  you  what  an  effort  it  represented. 
I  cannot  begin  to  tell  you  how  many  times  Mr. 
Fiske  and  I  virtually  dismissed  an  entire  com- 
pany; how  over  and  over  again  members  of  the 
cast  were  weeded  out  and  others  engaged;  how 
over  and  over  again  we  would  start  with  an  al- 
21 


MRS.  FISKE 

most  entirely  new  company,  until  every  part, 
from  Holbrook  Blinn's  down  to  the  very  tiniest, 
was  perfectly  realized;  how  much  there  was  of 
private  rehearsal;  of  the  virtual  opening  of  a 
dramatic  conservatory;  how  much  of  the  most 
exquisite  care  before  'Salvation  Nell'  was 
ready." 

So  you  may  guess  that  when  Mrs.  Fiske  is 
out  in  the  provinces  and  sees  a  play  advertised 
to  be  given  "with  the  original  cast,"  she  is  a 
little  taken  aback.  What?  They  have  made 
no  improvements  since  they  began?  And  then, 
encouraged  by  the  suspicion  that  the  poster  is 
mendacious  from  sheer  force  of  habit,  she 
throws  off  her  fears  and  goes  to  the  play. 

"I  think,"  she  went  on,  "that  'Erstwhile 
Susan'  is  excellently  done,  and  that  we  had 
fairly  approached  perfection  in  'Leah  Kleschna' 
and  'The  New  York  Idea.'  So  far  as  the  im- 
pression upon  the  public  and  the  critics  went, 
these  last  two  were  far  more  important  achieve- 
ments than  'Salvation  Nell.'  " 

"At  least,"  I  agreed,  "the  impression  of  the 
acting  in  'Kleschna'  and  the  Mitchell  comedy 
was  far  more  brilliant.  Certainly  it  was 

22 


THE  REPERTORY  IDEA 

praised  much  more  highly  than  the  acting  in 
'Salvation  Nell.'  " 

"Whereas,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske,  "the  truth  is 
that  in  neither  of  them  was  the  ideal  in  acting 
realized  with  such  absolute  perfection  as  it  was 
in  the  play  by  Edward  Sheldon.  In  each  there 
was  one  tiny  false  note — a  note  the  casual  ob- 
server would  never  hear,  that  only  the  most 
astute  critic  would  be  aware  of.  Yet  a  pro- 
duction is  either  right  or  it  is  not,  and  for  me 
these  little  false  notes  spoiled  the  ideal.  The 
ideal  was  spoiled  in  'The  New  York  Idea,' 
where,  nevertheless,  you  had  Mr.  Arliss  playing 
a  part  that  Mr.  Mitchell  had  written  expressly 
for  him  and  that  therefore  fitted  him  as,  in  the 
ordinary  course  of  events,  he  could  not  hope  to 
be  fitted  again.  Mr.  Arliss  was  perfect.  There 
was  John  Mason  at  his  splendid  best,  and  there 
was  Marian  Lea.  Dear  me,  what  weeks  and 
months  we  spent  persuading  her  to  return  to  the 
stage  just  for  this!  And  yet  I  should  have  to 
go  far  back  to  recall  anything  so  exquisite  in 
high  comedy  as  Marian  Lea's  performance  in 
her  husband's  glittering  play. 

"And  by  the  way,"  she  added,  smiling,  "right 

23 


MRS.  FISKE 

here  is  a  very  pretty  illustration  of  the  virtual 
'impossibility  of  safety  in  this  precious  repertory 
system  you  are  all  so  fond  of.  In  'The  New 
York  Idea'  the  only  false  note  was  sounded  by 
an  actor  whose  performance  in  'Leah  Kleschna' 
had  been  superb.  Repertory,  indeed !" 

It  was  evident  by  this  time  that  a  producer 
must  find  for  every  play  its  own  particular  cast 
or  die  in  the  attempt.  But  even  a  company 
miraculously  fitted  to  half  a  dozen  plays  would, 
she  argued,  scarcely  be  able  to  give  half,  let 
alone  all,  of  them  in  a  single  season. 

"To  play  an  important  new  role  in  one  play 
by  Ibsen  or  by  any  of  the  great  moderns  would 
take  an  actor  all  of  a  year,"  Mrs.  Fiske  con- 
fessed. "I  could  not  possibly  do  two  in  a  sea- 
son and  do  either  of  them  well.  And  so  it  is 
with  most  of  the  players  I  know.  I  remember 
Mr.  Arliss  saying  that  it  took  him  six  months 
to  perfect  a  part,  but  I  suspect  he  was  under- 
estimating. I  remember  asking  Madame 
Janauschek — there  was  a  great  actress,  my 
friend,  a  heroic  creature,  the  last  of  a  race  of 
giants — I  asked  her  one  day  how  long  she 
needed  to  master  a  part,  and  she,  who  had  had 
her  training  in  the  quick  changes  at  the  court 

24 


Mrs.  Fiske  as  Becky  Sharp 


THE  REPERTORY  IDEA 

theater,  said  that  two  months  was  the  very  least 
she  must  have.  I  simply  cannot  understand  the 
hardihood  of  those  who  suggest  that  any  com- 
pany should  undertake  such  a  staggering  pro- 
gram as  the  repertory  advocates  invariably 
propose." 

You  see,  Mrs.  Fiske  is  obdurate.  Stories  of 
repertory's  success  in  Europe  leave  her  un- 
moved. What  may  be  good  for  France  or  Ger- 
many is  not  necessarily  good  for  us.  Perhaps, 
she  will  admit,  it  is  more  feasible  in  a  country 
where  a  long-developed  art  sense  is  stronger 
among  the  playgoers,  who  can  thereby  discard 
what  is  bad  and  recognize  immediately  what  is 
good,  in  a  country  where  the  theater  itself  has 
been  subjected  for  generations  to  such  a  shaking- 
down  and  weeding-out  process  as  we  need  so 
badly  here. 

"We  need  it,  even  though  we  lost  ninety  per 
cent,  of  our  actors,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske,  with  the 
greatest  cheerfulness.  "Though,  mind  you, 
such  a  weeding-out  should  not  be  done  too 
hastily." 

And  she  told  then  the  story  of  a  charming 
genius  who  once  played  with  her  for  a  little  time 
in  "Becky  Sharp."  He  never  learned  any  of 

2? 


MRS.  FISKE 

his  lines,  but  he  was  entirely  honorable  about  it, 
for  by  some  mysterious  system  of  his  own  he 
did  manage  to  learn  his  cues,  so  that  his  fellow- 
players  were  not  left  stranded  in  the  middle  of 
a  dialogue.  At  last  it  was  necessary  to  give 
him  notice,  and  this  was  no  sooner  served  than 
he  gave  a  performance  so  perfected  and  so  strik- 
ing that  every  audience  was  thrilled,  and  Mrs. 
Fiske  herself  fairly  uplifted.  And  she  had  al- 
ready engaged  another  actor  for  the  part!  It 
was  too  desolating. 

"You  see,  we  must  not  weed  out  too  hastily. 
For  example,  they  say  William  Gillette  was 
quite  too  impossible  when  he  first  went  upon  the 
stage,  yet  it  would  have  been  a  pity  to  have 
weeded  him  out." 

Unabashed  by  the  Continent,  Mrs.  Fiske  will 
certainly  not  quail  when  the  repertory  enthusiast 
brandishes  the  Metropolitan  to  confound  her. 
What  may  work  well  enough  in  the  opera-house 
will  not  settle  the  more  subtle  and  complex 
problems  of  the  theater. 

"Besides,"  she  said,  "there  they  have  all  the 
greatest  artists  of  the  world  under  one  roof.  I 
admit  it  might  be  rather  interesting  to  see  a 
repertory  theater  that  boasted  a  Duse  and  an 

28 


THE  REPERTORY  IDEA 

Irving  and  a  Terry  and  a  Rejane  and  a  few 
more  like  them  all  in  one  great,  flexible  com- 
pany. This  company  the  opera  has.  They 
seem  willing  enough  to  endow  opera  on  such  a 
scale,  but  I  take  it  that  the  most  multitudinous 
Maecenas — all  Wall  Street,  no  less — would  not 
attempt  to  endow  such  a  theater''' 

And,  as  I  learned,  it  does  no  good  to  remind 
her  of  the  repertory  ventures  with  which  she 
herself  has  been  identified,  notably,  of  course, 
in  the  first  season  of  her  return  to  the  stage  as 
Mrs.  Fiske  and  then,  years  before,  when  she 
was  a  child  in  the  middle  West  and  would  be 
drafted  for  the  children's  roles  if  some  such 
"visiting"  star  as  John  McCullough  or  Mary 
Anderson  passed  that  way. 

"And  they  thought  nothing  of  giving  a  differ- 
ent play  every  night,"  she  said,  with  a  smile 
for  the  days  of  labor  so  titanic  that  if  you  even 
suggested  the  like  to  one  of  our  actors  to-day 
he  would  swoon.  "But  that  was  long  ago,  and 
I  told  you  that  repertory  was  outworn.  Be- 
sides, I  'm  not  aware  any  one  ever  pretended  it 
was  the  best  way,  the  artistic  way.  Then  it 
was  the  only  possible  way.  And,  in  any  case," 
she  added  with  perfect  finality,  "you  can 
29 


MRS.  FISKE 

scarcely  expect  me  to  approve  my  own  career  in 
the  theater.  I  do  not  approve  it." 

Nor  was  she  moved  by  a  reminder  that  Mr. 
Irving  and  Miss  Terry,  or,  for  that  matter,  that 
Duse,  had  brought  repertories  of  plays  to  this 
country. 

"It  is  true,"  she  said,  "that  Henry  Irving 
would  bring  us  a  large  repertory  of  noble  plays, 
almost  perfectly  produced.  But  not  one  of 
them  at  first  had  its  place  in  a  repertory.  Each 
was  a  highly  specialized  offering,  each  the  re- 
sult of  months  of  concentrated  thought,  study, 
preparation,  and  development. 

"Perhaps,"  she  admitted,  "your  repertory 
theater  would  nurse  along  a  fragile  piece,  but 
its  effect  on  strong  plays  would  be  disastrous. 
Even  if  by  some  miracle  they  were  played  well, 
they  would  be  played  intermittently  and  com- 
paratively seldom.  Comparatively  few  would 
see  them,  and  this  process  simply  burns  up  the 
literature  of  the  stage.  Suppose  that  'The 
Great  Divide'  had  been  done  at  the  New 
Theater.  Think  of  that !" 

What  I  did  think  of  was  Charles  Frohman's 
gallant  experiment  with  the  repertory  idea  in 
London,  when,  abetted  by  the  same  Granville 

30 


THE  REPERTORY  IDEA 

Barker,  he  sank  a  king's  ransom  in  the  pro- 
duction of  many  fine  plays,  among  them  "Jus- 
tice," which,  for  all  its  silken  playing,  knew 
only  a  dozen  performances  and  did  not  come 
into  its  own  until  a  specialist  gave  Galsworthy 
his  due  five  years  later  in  New  York. 

"But  badly  played,"  Mrs.  Fiske  resumed, 
after  this  interruption,  "such  plays  are  simply 
slaughtered.  Like  the  poor  'Doctor's  Di- 
lemma.' Or  like  Masefield's  'Tragedy  of  Nan,' 
which  demands  the  most  subtle  treatment,  and 
Arnold  Bennett's  'The  Honeymoon,'  each  of 
which  the  Stage  Society  killed  in  a  single  night. 
That  exquisite  little  play  of  Mr.  Bennett's  had 
been  close  to  my  heart  for  a  long  time.  For 
years  Mr.  Fiske  and  I  searched  in  vain  for  just 
the  right  actor  to  play  the  part  of  the  aviator. 
We  searched  for  him  in  this  country  and  we 
searched  for  him  in  England.  When  we  found 
him,  it  was  our  intention  to  secure  the  play,  if 
possible,  and  to  produce  it.  But  we  never 
found  the  ideal  actor  for  the  part.  And  so  a 
plan  which  I  had  greatly  cherished  had  to  be 
abandoned. 

"But  the  Stage  Society  had  no  hesitancy  in 
the  matter  of  casting  this  delicate  play — this 

31 


MRS.  FISKE 

play  that  could  be  crushed  as  easily  as  the  wings 
of  a  butterfly.  Thus  was  the  lovely  'Honey- 
moon' killed  and  thrown  away." 

So  a  comedy  that,  with  a  brilliant  Belasco 
production,  might  have  flourished  like  the  green 
bay-tree  or  "The  Boomerang,"  was  simply  de- 
stroyed. Yet  it  did  seem  a  little  unfair  to  the 
already  sorely  beset  repertory  idea  to  make  it 
shoulder  the  sins  of  such  audible,  but  vague  and 
ineffectual,  idealists  as  the  Stage  Society  and 
its  like. 

"Perhaps  it  is  unfair,"  Mrs.  Fiske  agreed  re- 
luctantly, "and  yet  it  seems  all  of  a  piece  to 
me.  The  itch  of  the  vague  idealist  to  get  his, 
or  more  often  her,  hands  on  the  theater,  some- 
times, I  suspect,  just  the  long-thwarted  ambition 
of  the  stage-struck  girl  to  get  behind  the  scenes, 
invariably  takes  the  form  of  a  demand  for  reper- 
tory. It  always  has  taken  this  form,  even  back 
to  the  days  when  I  was  a  girl  and  there  was  a 
great  clatter  about  the  Theater  of  Arts  and 
Letters.  The  uplift  societies  are  never  content 
to  destroy  one  play;  they  must  needs  destroy 
three  or  four. 

"These  enthusiasts  all  cry  out  the  while  for 
the  perfect  thing  in  the  theater,  quite  regardless 

32 


THE  REPERTORY  IDEA 

of  the  fact  that  we  have  had  it  often,  or  at  least 
come  as  close  to  it  from  time  to  time  as  in  my 
opinion  we  ever  shall.  Mr.  Palmer,  Mr.  Daly, 
Mr.  Belasco  many  times  closely  approached  the 
ideal.  And  what  an  illumination  and  inspi- 
ration such  an  approach  is !  How  it  uplifts  and 
educates!  To  the  actor  in  the  making  what  a 
solid  helfc  it  is!  The  opportunity  merely  to 
witness  one  perfect  performance  would  give  him 
more  of  strength  and  guidance  than  would  his 
own  playing  of  twenty  parts  in  more  or  less  im- 
perfect productions.  He  could  see  such  per- 
formances at  such  a  national  theater  as  we  might 
have  if — but  that  is  another  story.  We  '11 
come  back  to  it  one  of  these  days. 

"And,  after  all,  the  disposition  of  the  more 
clamorous  repertory  enthusiasts  to  ignore  these 
achievements  is  merely  irritating.  My  real 
objection  to  their  theory  of  the  theater  is  that 
it  is  destructive  of  valuable  theatrical  property. 
That  is  it:  it  destroys  property." 

Whereupon  I  retreated  hastily,  and  attempted 
to  consolidate  my  position  on  that  last  firm 
stand  the  defenders  of  repertory  always  take, 
the  good  of  the  actor.  Now,  one  who  will 
admit  that  repertory  is  unnecessary  in  such  a 

33 


MRS.  FISKE 

city  as  New  York,  which,  with  its  great  variety 
of  plays,  is  itself  a  repertory  theater;  who  will 
admit  that  no  one  company  can  hope  to  embody 
perfectly  the  marked  divergences  of  several 
modern  plays;  that  that  author  is  best  served 
who  has  the  whole  wide  world  to  draw  on  for 
each  specialized  cast,  will  still  cling  to  the 
scheme  in  behalf  of  the  actor.  Winthrop  Ames, 
emerging  from  the  wreck  of  the  New  Theater, 
can  see  this  one  excuse  for  repertory,  the  actor's 
interest.  Does  it  not  stunt  the  actor's  growth 
to  play  one  role  month  after  month,  maybe  year 
after  year?  Surely  you  remember  that  moment 
in  the  recent  Follies  where  the  bogus  Jane 
Cowl  chokes  back  her  sobs  long  enough  to  give 
voice  to  the  actor's  lament:  "They  gave^ne  a. 
crying  part  in  'Within  the  Law,'  and  oh,  my 
God,  it  was  a  success!"  For  freshness,  change, 
experience,  does  not  the  actor  need  the  shifting 
programs  of  the  repertory  theater*?  Else  how 
shall  we  train  the  Duses,  the  Irvings,  the  Mrs. 
Fiskes,  the  Forbes-Robertsons  of  1930? 

"Is  it  not  necessary,  then,  for  the  training  of 
the  actor?" 

Mrs.  Fiske  laughed  immoderately. 

"To  educate  the  actor  at  the  expense  of  the 

34 


Charles  Waldron  and  Mrs.  Fiske  in  the  first  scene  of  Edward  Shel- 
don's "The  High  Road" 


THE  REPERTORY  IDEA 

public  and  dramatic  literature!"  she  exclaimed 
in  great  amusement.  "Bless  you,  that  will 
never  do.  It  might  be  fairly  safe  if  they  would 
say:  'Here  we  are  giving  imperfect  and  inade- 
quate performances.  They  are  not  good  art, 
but  they  will  help  train  our  actors/  Not  that 
I  am  sure  it  would  train  them,  mind  you,  and 
I  am  quite  certain  it 's  a  needless  extravagance. 
"I  do  not  know  who  started  the  precious 
notion  that  an  actor  needs  half  a  dozen  parts  a 
season  in  order  to  develop  his  art.  Some  very 
lazy  fellow,  I  suspect.  If  he  has  one  role  that 
amounts  to  anything,  that  has  some  substance 
and  inspiration,  he  simply  cannot  exhaust  its 
possibilities  in  less  than  a  year.  He  cannot. 
Probably  he  cannot  even  play  it  perfectly  for 
the  first  time  before  the  end  of  the  first  season. 
And  if  his  parts  are  empty  and  unnourishing,  I 
cannot  for  the  life  of  me  see  how  the  mere  fact 
of  having  six  instead  of  one  in  a  season  will 
avail  him  anything.  Then  suppose  the  director 
is  incompetent.  Directors  usually  are,  you 
know.  And,  under  incompetent  direction,  is 
not  your  actor  in  the  making  better  off  if  he 
need  play  only  one  part  badly  rather  than  six 
parts  badly?" 

37 


MRS.  FISKE 

Then  how  is  the  young  actor  to  be  trained? 
Mrs.  Fiske  is  not  entirely  obdurate  against  the 
provincial  stock  companies,  and  yet  she  is  a 
little  afraid  of  them.  They  might  serve  their 
purpose  in  the  young  actor's  apprenticeship  if, 
advised  by  her,  he  would  keep  reminding  him- 
self: "This  is  all  wrong,  wrong,  wrong.  I 
cannot  play  Smith  while  I  am  memorizing 
Brown.  This  does  not  teach  me  acting.  It 
teaches  me  tricks.  I  am  getting  a  certain  ease 
and  facility,  but  it  is  all  wrong." 

But  will  he  keep  this  in  mind"?  Will  he  not 
rather  gain  confidence  and  nothing  else?  She 
shudders  at  the  consequences  which  she  has  seen 
so  often. 

"He  starts  with  the  firm  touch  on  the  wrong 
note,  and  as  he  grows  more  and  more  confident, 
the  touch  becomes  firmer  and  firmer.  To  our 
great  dismay,  the  false  step  is  taken  then  with 
a  new  and  disconcerting  air  of  sureness  and  au- 
thority. In  all  the  theater,  my  friend,  there  is 
nothing  quite  so  deadly  as  this  firmer  and  firmer 
touch  on  the  wrong  note." 

So  suppose  he  accepts  an  engagement  in  New 
York  and  has  just  one  part  that  lasts  and  lasts 
and  lasts.  I  wanted  to  know  about  him. 

38 


THE  REPERTORY  IDEA 

"If  at  the  end  of  the  season  he  has  exhausted 
it,"  Mrs.  Fiske  advised,  "let  him  resist  all  in- 
ducements to  continue.  And  if  during  that 
first  season  his  part  does  not  stimulate,  nourish, 
and  tax  him,  let  him  study.  He  may  have  only 
one  role  in  the  theater,  but  he  may  have  a  dozen 
in  his  room.  A  violinist  will  have  an  immense 
repertory  before  he  makes  even  his  first  appear- 
ance in  public.  A  singer's  studies  are  never 
done,  and  I  am  sure  that,  if  you  inquired,  you 
would  find  such  artists  as  Melba  and  Caruso 
still  working  with  their  teachers.  It  should  be 
so  in  the  theater.  It  should  be.  Our  actors 
fret  if  they  have  to  play  one  role  month  after 
month,  but  that  is  no  proof  that  they  are  am- 
bitious. They  are  lazy.  Why  should  there  be 
all  this  talk  of  training  actors,  anyway*?  If  an 
actor  is  an  artist,  he  will  train  himself." 

This  invoked  visions  of  a  deserted  Lambs' 
Club  and  the  great  player  of  to-morrow  doing 
his  present  fretting  before  the  mirror  in  a  hall 
bedroom.  It  provoked  a  few  doubts  which  I 
desired  cleared  away. 

"And  if  he  is  n't  an  artist?" 

"Ah,  if  he  is  not  an  artist*?  Well,  in  that 
case  does  it  matter  much  what  becomes  of  him? 

39 


MRS.  FISKE 

The  sooner  he  departs  from  the  theater  the 
better." 

So  we  ceased  to  worry  about  the  wretched 
fellow  and  abandoned  him  to  his  fate.  The 
supper  was  over. 

As  we  stood  outside  on  the  steps  the  whole 
city  was  buried  in  sleet.  The  trolley-wires 
crackled  overhead  and  in  a  near-by  avenue 
lighted  up  the  sky  with  a  fitful,  blue-green 
glare.  Mrs.  Fiske  affected  surprise. 

"What,"  she  asked,  "is  Mr.  Belasco  doing 
over  there*?" 

We  were  all  for  going  over  then  to  hiss  when 
her  attention  was  caught  by  a  horse  that  had 
fallen  between  the  shafts  in  the  slippery  street. 
A  lumbering  driver  was  trying  to  kick  him  to 
his  feet.  This  was  too  much.  Mr.  Belasco 
was  forgotten,  and  from  the  curb  the  voice  of 
Becky  Sharp  made  protest.  The  driver  de- 
sisted, and  gravely  studied  her  from  a  distance. 
Then  he  spoke. 

"Mind  your  own  business — lady,"  he  said, 
and  at  this  baffling  blend  of  manners  Mrs.  Fiske 
laughed  all  the  way  home. 


40 


II 

ON    IBSEN    THE    POPULAR 

WE  talked  of  many  things,  Mrs.  Fiske 
and  I,  as  we  sat  at  tea  on  a  wide  ve- 
randa one  afternoon  last  Summer.  It  looked 
out  lazily  across  a  sunlit  valley,  the  coziest 
valley  in  New  Jersey.  A  huge  dog  that  lay 
sprawled  at  her  feet  was  unspeakably  bored  by 
the  proceedings.  He  was  a  recruit  from  the 
Bide-a-wee  Home,  this  fellow,  a  Great  Dane 
with  just  enough  of  other  strains  in  his  blood 
to  remind  him  that  (like  the  Danes  at  Mr. 
Wopsle's  Elsinore)  he  had  but  recently  come  up 
from  the  people.  It  kept  him  modest,  anxious 
to  please,  polite.  So  Zak  rarely  interrupted, 
save  when,  at  times,  he  would  suggestively  ex- 
tract his  rubber  ball  from  the  pocket  of  her 
knitted  jacket  and  thus  artfully  invite  her  to  a 
mad  game  on  the  lawn. 

We  talked  of  many  things — of  Duse  and  St. 
Teresa  and  Eva  Booth  and  Ibsen.  When  we 
were  speaking  casually  and  quite  idly  of  Ibsen, 

41 


MRS.  FISKE 

I  chanced  to  voice  the  prevailing  idea  that,  even 
with  the  least  popular  of  his  plays,  she  had  al- 
ways had,  at  all  events,  the  satisfaction  of  a 
great  succes  d'estime.  I  could  have  told  merely 
by  the  way  her  extraordinarily  eloquent  fan 
came  into  play  at  that  moment  that  the  con- 
versation was  no  longer  idle. 

"Succes  d'estime!"  she  exclaimed  with  fine 
scorn.  "Stuff  and  nonsense !  Stuff,  my  friend, 
and  nonsense." 

And  we  were  off. 

"I  have  always  been  embarrassed  by  the  ap- 
parently general  disposition  to  speak  of  our 
many  seasons  with  Isben  as  an  heroic  adventure, 
— as  a  series  of  heroic  adventures,  just  as 
though  we  had  suffered  all  the  woes  of  pioneers 
in  carrying  his  plays  to  the  uttermost  reaches  of 
the  continent.  This  is  a  charming  light  to  cast 
upon  us,  but  it  is  quite  unfair  to  a  great  genius 
who  has  given  us  money  as  well  as  inexhaustible 
inspiration.  It  is  unfair  to  Ibsen.  I  was  really 
quite  taken  aback  not  long  ago  when  the  editor 
of  a  Western  paper  wrote  of  the  fortune  we  had 
lost  in  introducing  the  Norwegian  to  America. 
I  wish  I  knew  some  way  to  shatter  forever  this 
monstrous  idea.  Save  for  the  first  season  of  'A 

42 


ON  IBSEN  THE  POPULAR 

Doll's  House,'  many  years  ago,  our  Ibsen  sea- 
sons have  invariably  been  profitable.  Now  and 
then,  it  is  true,  the  engagement  of  an  Ibsen  play 
in  this  city  or  that  would  be  unprofitable,  but 
never,  since  the  first,  have  we  known  an  un- 
profitable Ibsen  year. 

"When  I  listen,  as  I  have  so  often  had  to 
listen,  to  the  ill-considered  comments  of  the  un- 
thinking and  the  uninformed,  when  I  listen  to 
airily  expressed  opinions  based  on  no  real 
knowledge  of  Ibsen's  history  in  this  country,  no 
real  understanding  whatever,  I  am  silent,  but  I 
like  to  recall  a  certain  final  matinee  of  'Ros- 
mersholm'  at  the  huge  Grand  Opera  House  in 
Chicago,  when  the  audience  crowded  the  theater 
from  pit  to  dome,  when  the  stairways  were 
literally  packed  with  people  standing,  and  when 
every  space  in  the  aisles  was  filled  with  chairs, 
for  at  that  time  chairs  were  allowed  in  the  aisles. 
And  I  like  to  remember  the  quality  of  that  great 
audience.  It  was  the  sort  of  audience  one 
would  find  at  a  symphony  concert,  an  audience 
silent  and  absorbed,  an  overwhelming  rebuke 
to  the  flippant  scoffers  who  are  ignorant  of  the 
ever-increasing  power  of  the  great  theater 
iconoclast." 

43 


MRS.  FISKE 

And  so,  quite  by  accident,  I  discovered  that, 
just  as  you  have  only  to  whisper  Chatterton's 
old  heresy,  "Shakespeare  spells  ruin,"  to  move 
William  Winter  to  the  immediate  composition 
of  three  impassioned  articles,  so  you  have  only 
to  question  the  breadth  of  Ibsen's  appeal  to 
bring  Mrs.  Fiske  rallying  to  his  defense.  Then 
she,  who  has  a  baffling  way  of  forgetting  the 
theater's  very 'existence  and  would  always  far 
rather  talk  of  saints  or  dogs  or  the  breathless 
magic  of  Adirondack  nights,  will  return  to  the 
stage.  So  it  happened  that  that  afternoon  over 
the  tea-cups  we  went  back  over  many  seasons 
—"A  Doll's  House,"  "Hedda  Gabler,"  "Ros- 
mersholm"  and  "The  Pillars  of  Society." 

"As  I  say,"  she  explained,  "  'A  Doll's  House' 
in  its  first  season  was  not  profitable;  but,  then, 
that  was  my  own  first  season  as  Mrs.  Fiske,  and 
it  was  but  one  of  a  number  of  plays  in  a  finan- 
cially unsuccessful  repertory.  And  even  that, 
I  suppose,  was,  from  the  shrewdest  business 
point  of  view,  a  sound  investment  in  reputation. 
It  was  a  wise  thing  to  do.  But  the  real 
disaster  was  predicted  by  every  one  for  'Ros- 
mersholm.'  There  was  the  most  somber  and 
most  complex  tragedy  of  its  period.  No  one 

44 


Mrs.  Fiske  as  Hedda 


ON  IBSEN  THE  POPULAR 

would  go  to  see  that,  they  said,  and  I  am  still 
exasperated  from  time  to  time  by  finding  evi- 
dences of  a  hazy  notion  that  it  did  not  prosper. 
'Rosmersholm'  was  played,  and  not  particu- 
larly well  played,  either,  for  one  hundred  and 
ninety-nine  consecutive  performances  at  a  profit 
of  $40,000.  I  am  never  greatly  interested  in 
figures,  but  I  had  the  curiosity  to  make  sure  of 
these.  Of  course  that  is  a  total  of  many  prof- 
itable weeks  and  some  unprofitable  ones  and 
of  'course  it  is  not  an  overpowering  reward  for 
a  half-season  in  the  theater.  In  telling  you 
that  Ibsen  may  be  profitable  in  a  money  sense, 
I  am  not  so  mad  as  to  say  other  things  may  not 
be  far  more  profitable.  But  $40,000  profit 
scarcely  spells  ruin. 

"And  I  tell  you  all  this  because  it  is  so  dis- 
couraging to  the  Ibsen  enthusiasts  to  have  the 
baseless,  the  false  idea  persist  that  he  and  the 
box-office  are  at  odds.  Sensibly  projected  in 
the  theater — " 

"Instead,"  I  suggested,  "of  being  played  by 
strange  people  at  still  stranger  matinees — " 

"Of  course.  Rightly  projected  in  the  thea- 
ter, Ibsen  always  has  paid  and  always  will. 
And  that  is  worth  shouting  from  the  housetops, 

47 


MRS.  FISKE 

because  sensibly  and  rightly  projected  in  the 
theater,  the  fine  thing  always  does  pay.  Oh,  I 
have  no  patience  with  those  who  descend  upon 
a  great  play,  produce  it  without  understanding, 
and  then,  because  disaster  overtakes  it,  throw  up 
their  hands  and  say  there  is  no  public  for  fine 
art.  How  absurd !  In  New  York  alone  there 
are  two  unversities,  a  college  or  two,  and  no  end 
of  schools.  What  more  responsive  public  could 
our  producers  ask?  But  let  us  remember  that 
the  greater  the  play,  the  more  carefully  must  it 
be  directed  and  acted,  and  that  for  every  pro- 
duction in  the  theater  there  is  a  psychologically 
right  moment.  Move  wisely  in  these  things, 
and  the  public  will  not  fail." 

For  many  false  but  wide-spread  impressions 
of  Ibsen  we  were  inclined  to  blame  somewhat 
the  reams  of  nonsense  that  have  been  written 
and  rewritten  about  him,  the  innumerable  little 
essays  on  his  gloom. 

"And  none  at  all  on  his  warmth,  his  gaiety, 
his  infinite  humanity,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske,  her  eyes 
sparkling.  "When  will  the  real  book  of  Ibsen 
criticism  find  its  way  to  the  shelf?  How  can 
we  persuade  people  to  turn  back  to  the  plays 
and  re-read  them  for  the  color,  the  romance,  the 


ON  IBSEN  THE  POPULAR 

life  there  is  in  them"?  Where  in  all  the  world 
of  modern  drama,  for  instance,  is  there  a  comedy 
so  buoyant,  so  dazzlingly  joyous  as  'An  Enemy 
of  the  People'?' 

"They  say  he  is  parochial,"  I  ventured. 

"Let  them  say.  They  said  it  of  Hedda,  but 
that  poor,  empty,  little  Norwegian  neurotic  has 
been  recognized  all  over  the  world.  The 
trouble  with  Hedda  is  not  that  she  is  parochial, 
but  that  she  is  poor  and  empty.  She  was  fasci- 
nating to  play,  and  I  suppose  that  every  actress 
goes  through  the  phase  of  being  especially  at- 
tracted by  such  characters,  a  part  of  the  phase 
when  the  eagerness  to  'study  life'  takes  the  form 
of  an  interest  in  the  eccentric,  abnormal,  dis- 
torted— the  perverted  aspects  of  life.  As  a  role 
Hedda  is  a  marvelous  portrait;  as  a  person  she 
is  empty.  After  all,  the  empty  evil,  selfish 
persons  are  not  worth  our  time — either  yours  or 
mine — in  the  theater  any  more  than  in  life. 
They  do  not  matter.  They  do  not  count. 
They  are  enormously  unimportant.  On  the 
highway  of  life  the  Hedda  G  abler s  are  just  so 
much  impedimenta" 

"Do  you  recall,"  I  inquired,  "that  that  is  the 
very  word  Csesar  used  for  'baggage'?" 

49 


MRS.  FISKE 

Whereat  Mrs.  Fiske  smiled  so  approvingly 
that  I  knew  poor  Hedda  would  be  "impedi- 
menta" to  the  end  of  the  chapter. 

"But  she  is  universal,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske,  sud- 
denly remembering  that  some  one  had  dared  to 
call  Ibsen  parochial.  "She  was  recognized  all 
over  the  world.  London  saw  her  at  every  din- 
ner-table, and  I  have  watched  a  great  audito- 
rium in  the  far  West — a  place  as  large  as  our 
Metropolitan — held  enthralled  by  that  bril- 
liant comedy." 

"Which  I  myself  have  seen  played  as 
tragedy." 

"Of  course  you  have,"  she  answered  in 
triumph.  "And  that  is  precisely  the  trouble. 
When  you  think  how  shockingly  Ibsen  has  been 
misinterpreted  and  mangled,  it  is  scarcely  sur- 
prising that  there  are  not  a  dozen  of  his  plays 
occupying  theaters  in  New  York  at  this  time. 
It  is  only  surprising  he  has  lived  to  tell  the 
tale.  Small  wonder  he  has  been  roundly 
abused." 

And  I  mentioned  one  performance  of  "John 
Gabriel  Borkmann"  in  which  only  the  central 
figure  was  adequately  played  and  which  moved 
one  of  the  newspaper  scribes  to  an  outburst 

50 


ON  IBSEN  THE  POPULAR 

against,  not  the  players,  but  against  Ibsen  as 
the  "sick  man  of  the  theater." 

"Exactly,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske.  "And  so  it  has 
always  gone.  Ibsen's  plays  are  too  majestic 
and  too  complex  to  be  so  maltreated.  To  read 
'Borkmann'  in  the  light  of  some  knowledge  of 
life  is  to  marvel  at  the  blending  of  human  in- 
sight and  poetic  feeling.  How  beautiful,  how 
wonderful  is  that  last  walk  with  Ella  through 
the  mists !  But  played  without  understanding, 
this  and  the  others  are  less  than  nothing  at  all. 
Yet  with  the  published  texts  in  every  book- 
store, there  is  no  excuse  for  any  of  us  blaming 
the  outrage  on  Ibsen.  We  would  attend  a 
high-school  orchestra's  performance  of  a  Wag- 
nerian  score  and  blame  the  result  on  Wagner. 
Or  would  we?  We  would  have  once." 

And  we  paused  to  recall  how  curiously  alike 
had  been  the  advent  and  development  of  these 
two  giants  as  irresistible  forces. 

"It  was  not  so  very  long  ago,"  said  Mrs. 
Fiske,  with  great  satisfaction,  "that  a  goodly 
number  of  well-meaning  people  dismissed 
Wagner  with  tolerant  smiles.  There  is  a 
goodly  number  of  the  same  sort  of  people  who 
still  wave  Ibsen  away.  Extraordinary  ques- 

51 


MRS.  FISKE 

tions  are  still  asked  with  regard  to  him.  The 
same  sort  of  dazing  questions,  I  suppose,  were 
once  asked  about  Wagner.  I  myself  have  been 
asked,  'Why  do  you  like  Ibsen1?'  And  to  such 
a  question,  after  the  first  staggering  moment, 
one  perhaps  finds  voice  to  ask  in  return,  'Why 
do  you  like  the  ocean  *?'  Or,  'Why  do  you  like 
a  sunrise  above  the  mountain  peak1?'  Or,  pos- 
sibly, 'What  do  you  find  interesting  in  Ni- 
agara*?' 

"But,  then,  the  key  is  given  in  those  delight- 
ful letters  after  'An  Enemy  of  the  People.' 
You  remember  Ibsen  admitted  there  that  his  ab- 
horred 'compact  majority'  eventually  gathered 
and  stood  behind  each  of  his  drama  messages; 
but  the  trouble  was  that  by  the  time  it  did 
arrive  he  himself  was  away  on  ahead — some- 
where else." 

And  we  went  back  with  considerable  enjoy- 
ment to  the  days  when  Ibsen  was  a  new  thing 
outside  Germany  and  his  own  Scandinavia, 
when  his  influence  had  not  yet  transformed  the 
entire  theater  of  the  Western  world,  remodeling 
its  very  architecture,  and  reaching  so  far  that 
never  a  pot-boiling  playwright  in  America  to- 
day but  writes  differently  than  he  would  have 

52 


written  if  Ibsen — or  an  Ibsen — had  not  written 
first.  Then  we  moved  gaily  on  to  the  Manhat- 
tan Theater  in  the  days  when  the  Fiskes  first 
assumed  control.  It  seems  that  on  that  occa- 
sion, Mr.  Fiske  consulted  one  of  the  most  dis- 
tinguished writers  on  the  American  theater  for 
suggestions  as  to  the  plays  that  might  well  be 
included  in  Mrs.  Fiske's  program.  And  the 
answer,  after  making  several  suggestions,  wound 
up  by  expressing  the  hope  that,  at  all  events, 
they  would  having  nothing  to  do  with  "the  un- 
speakable Mr.  Ibsen." 

And  so  at  the  first  night  of  "Hedda  Gabler" 
— that  brilliant  premiere  which  Mrs.  Fiske  al- 
ways recalls  as  literally  an  ovation  for  William 
B.  Mack  and  Carlotta  Nillson,  eleventh-hour 
choices  both — there  was  nothing  for  the  afore- 
said writer  to  do  but  to  stand  in  the  lobby  and 
mutter  unprintable  nothings  about  the  taste, 
personal  appearance,  and  moral  character  of 
those  who  were  misguidedly  crowding  to  the 
doors.  But  what  had  he  wanted  her  to  play"? 
The  recollection  was  quite  too  much  for  Mrs. 
Fiske. 

"You  '11  never  believe  me,"  she  said,  amid 
her  laughter.  "But  he  suggested  Adrienne 

**-*  ot_j 

53 


MRS.  FISKE 

Lecouvreur,  Mrs.  Haller,  and  Pauline  in  'The 
Lady  of  Lyons.'  " 

A  good  deal  of  water  has  passed  under  the 
bridge  since  then,  but  even  when  the  Fiskes 
came  to  give  "Rosmersholm"  there  was  enough 
lingering  heresy  to  make  them  want  to  give  that 
most  difficult  of  them  all  a  production  so  perfect 
that  none  could  miss  its  meaning  or  escape  its 
spell. 

"I  had  set  my  heart  on  it,"  she  said  sadly. 
"It  was  to  have  been  our  great  work.  I  was 
bound  that  'Rosmersholm'  should  be  right  if  we 
had  to  go  to  the  ends  of  the  earth  for  our  cast. 
Mr.  Fiske  agreed.  I  do  not  know  what  other 
manager  there  has  been  in  our  time  from  whom 
I  could  have  had  such  whole-hearted  cooperation 
in  the  quest  of  the  fine  thing.  Mr.  Fiske  has 
been  my  artistic  backbone.  His  theater  knowl- 
edge, taste,  and  culture,  his  steadiness,  have 
balanced  my  own  carelessness.  Without  him 
I  should  have  been  obliterated  long  ago. 

"Well,  Mr.  Fiske  and  I  selected  Fuller 
Mellish  for  Kroll  in  'Rosmersholm.'  He  was 
perfect.  For  Brendel  we  wanted  Tyrone 
Power,  who,  because  Brendel  appears  in  only 
two  scenes,  could  not  recognize  the  great  im- 

54 


"Mr.  Fiske  has  been  my  artistic  backbone  .     .     .  with- 
out him  I  should  have  been  obliterated  long  ago" 


ON  IBSEN  THE  POPULAR 

portance  of  the  role.  That  is  a  way  actors  have. 
So  Mr.  Arliss  was  Brendel.  But  we  had  wanted 
Mr.  Arliss  for  Mortensgard,  and  of  course  as 
Mortensgard  he  would  have  been  superb.  And 
then  there  was  Rosmer.  Spiritual,  noble,  the 
great  idealist,  for  Rosmer  of  'Rosmersholm'  we 
had  but  one  choice.  It  must  be  Forbes- 
Robertson.  I  sought  Forbes-Robertson.  But 
I  suspect  he  thought  I  was  quite  mad.  I  suspect 
he  had  the  British  notion  that  Ibsen  should  be 
given  only  on  Friday  afternoons  in  January.  I 
dare  say  he  could  not  conceive  of  a  successful 
production  of  'Rosmersholm'  in  the  commercial 
theater." 

"It  flourished,  though." 

"Yes,  and  it  was  fairly  good.  But  it  was 
not  perfect.  It  was  not  right.  The  company 
was  composed  of  fine  actors  who  were,  however, 
not  all  properly  cast.  So  it  did  not  measure  up 
to  my  ideal,  and  I  was  not  satisfied.  It  drew, 
as  Ibsen  always  draws,  on  the  middle-class  sup- 
port. It  packed  the  balconies — to  a  great  ex- 
tent, I  imagine,  with  Germans  and  Scandi- 
navians. It  pleased  the  Ibsen  enthusiasts;  but, 
then,  I  am  not  an  Ibsen  enthusiast." 

This  was  a  little  startling. 

57 


MRS.  FISKE 

"Or,  rather,  have  not  always  been,"  she 
hastened  to  add.  "For  that,  you  must  know 
him  thoroughly,  and  such  knowledge  comes  only 
after  an  acquaintance  of  many  years.  I  have 
not  always  understood  him.  I  might  as  well 
admit,"  she  said  guiltily,  "that  I  once  wrote  a 
preposterous  article  on  Ibsen  the  pessimist, 
Ibsen  the  killjoy,  an  impulsive,  scatter-brained 
article  which  I  would  read  now  with  a  certain 
detached  wonder,  feeling  as  you  feel  when  you 
are  confronted  with  some  incredible  love-letter 
of  long  ago.  And  just  when  I  think  it  has  been 
forgotten,  buried  forever  in  the  dust  of  some  old 
magazine  file,  some  one  like  Mr.  Huneker, 
whom  nothing  escapes,  is  sure  to  resurrect  it 
and  twit  me  good-humoredly." 

That  acquaintance — when  did  it  first  begin? 

"Years  ago,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske.  "It  was 
when  I  was  a  young  girl  and  given  to  playing 
all  manner  of  things  all  over  the  country.  We 
were  all  imitating  delightful  Lotta  in  those 
days.  You  would  never  guess  who  sent  it  to 
me.  Lawrence  Barrett.  Not,  I  think,  with 
any  idea  that  I  should  play  it,  for  I  was  far  too 
young  then  even  for  Nora.  But  here  was  the 
great,  strange  play  every  one  was  talking  about, 

58 


ON  IBSEN  THE  POPULAR 

and  it  was  his  kindly  thought,  I  imagine,  that  I 
should  be  put  in  touch  with  the  new  ideas.  Of 
course  it  seemed  very  curious  to  me,  so  different 
from  everything  I  had  known,  so  utterly  lack- 
ing in  all  we  had  been  taught  to  consider  im- 
portant in  the  theater.  It  was  not  until  later 
that  I  played  Nora — emerged  from  my  retire- 
ment to  play  it  at  a  benefit  at  the  Empire. 

"No,  there  was  no  special  ardor  of  enthusiasm 
then.  I  came  to  play  the  other  parts  because, 
really,  there  was  nothing  else.  Shakspere 
was  not  for  me,  nor  the  standard  repertory  of 
the  day.  I  did  act  Frou  Frou,  and  I  cannot 
begin  to  tell  you  how  dreadful  I  was  as  Frou 
Frou.  But  I  did  not  play  Camille.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  I  could  not." 

There  had  to  be  an  explanation  of  this.  Mrs. 
Fiske  whispered  it. 

"I  cannot  play  a  love  scene,"  she  confessed. 
"I  never  could." 

So  it  was  from  such  alternatives  that  she 
turned  to  the  great  Ibsen  roles — roles  with  such 
depths  of  feeling,  such  vistas  of  life  as  must 
inspire  and  exact  the  best  from  any  player  any- 
where in  the  world. 

"And  now  to  play  smaller  pieces  seems  a  little 

59 


MRS.  FISKE 

petty — like  drawing  toy  trains  along  little  tin 
tracks.  No  work  for  a  grown-up.  And  if  now 
I  speak  much  of  Ibsen,  it  is  because  he  has  been 
my  inspiration,  because  I  have  found  in  his 
plays  that  life-sized  work  that  other  players 
tell  us  they  have  found  in  the  plays  of  Shak- 
spere." 

Life-sized  work.  We  thought  of  Irving  fix- 
ing twenty  years  as  a  decent  minimum  of  time 
in  which  a  man  of  talent  could  be  expected  to 
"present  to  the  public  a  series  of  characters 
acted  almost  to  perfection."  We  spoke  of 
Macready  standing  sadly  in  his  dressing-room 
after  his  memorable  last  performance  as  the 
Prince  of  Denmark.  "Good  night,  sweet 
Prince,"  he  murmured  as  he  laid  aside  the  velvet 
mantle  for  good  and  all,  and  then,  turning  to 
his  friend,  exclaimed:  "Ah,  I  am  just  begin- 
ning to  realize  the  sweetness,  the  tenderness,  the 
gentleness  of  this  dear  Hamlet"  So  we  spoke 
of  all  the  years  of  devotion  Shakspere  had  in- 
spired -in  the  players  of  yesterday  and  the  day 
before — "inexhaustible  inspiration,"  such  in- 
spiration, Mrs.  Fiske  said,  as  awaits  the 
thoughtful  actor  in  the  great  roles  of  Ibsen. 
She  found  it  in  Nora  and  Lona  and  Hedda  and 
60 


ON  IBSEN  THE  POPULAR 

Rebecca  West,  and  in  other  characters  we 
have  never  seen  her  play  and  never  shall  see 
her  play. 

"There  are,"  she  said,  "such  limitless  depths 
to  be  explored.  Many  a  play  is  like  a  painted 
backdrop,  something  to  be  looked  at  from  the 
front.  An  Ibsen  play  is  like  a  black  forest, 
something  you  can  enter,  something  you  can 
walk  about  in.  There  you  can  lose  yourself: 
you  can  lose  yourself.  And  once  inside,"  she 
added  tenderly,  "you  find  such  wonderful 
glades,  such  beautiful,  sunlit  places.  And  what 
makes  each  one  at  once  so  difficult  to  play  and 
so  fascinating  to  study  is  that  Ibsen  for  the  most 
part  gives  us  only  the  last  hours." 

Ibsen  gives  us  only  the  last  hours.  It  was 
putting  in  a  sentence  the  distinguishing  factor, 
the  substance  of  chapters  of  Ibsen  criticism. 
Here  was  set  forth  in  a  few  words  the  Nor- 
wegian's subtle  and  vastly  complex  harmonies 
that  weave  together  a  drama  of  the  present  and 
a  drama  of  the  past.  As  in  certain  plays  of 
the  great  Greeks,  as  in  "CEdipus  Tyrannus," 
for  instance,  so  in  the  masterpieces  of  the  great 
modem,  you  watch  the  race  hot  in  an  observa- 
tion train,  but  from  the  vantage-point  of  one 
61 


MRS.  FISKE 

posted  near  the  goal.  Your  first  glance  into 
one  of  these  forbidding  households  shows  only 
a  serene  surface.  It  is  the  calm  before  the 
storm — what  Mrs.  Fiske  likes  to  call  "the  omi- 
nous calm."  Then  rapidly  as  the  play  unfolds, 
the  past  overtakes  these  people.  You  meet  the 
scheming  Hedda  on  the  day  of  her  return  from 
her  wedding  trip.  In  little  more  than  twenty- 
four  hours  all  she  has  ever  been  makes  her  kill 
herself.  An  ironic  story  of  twenty  years'  ac- 
cumulation comes  to  its  climax  in  as  many 
hours.  You  have  arrived  just  in  time  to  wit- 
ness the  end. 

"Back  of  these  Ibsen  men  and  women,"  I 
put  in  tentatively,  "there  are  dancing  shadows 
on  the  wall  that  play  an  accompaniment  to 
the  unfolding  of  the  play." 

"A  nightmare  accompaniment,"  Mrs.  Fiske 
assented.  "Often  he  gives  us  only  the  last 
hours,  and  that,  my  friend,  is  why,  in  the  study 
of  Ibsen,  I  had  to  devise  what  was,  for  me,  a 
new  method.  To  learn  what  Hedda  was,  I 
had  to  imagine  all  that  she  had  ever  been.  By 
the  keys  he  provides  you  can  unlock  her  past. 
He  gives  us  the  last  hours:  we  must  recreate 
all  that  have  gone  before. 

62 


ON  IBSEN  THE  POPULAR 

"It  soon  dawned  on  me  that  studying  Hedda 
would  mean  more  than  merely  memorizing  the 
lines.  I  had  a  whole  summer  for  the  work — 
a  summer  my  cousin  and  I  spent  in  all  the  odd 
comers  of  Europe.  And  so,  at  even  odder  mo- 
ments, in  out-of-the-way  places,  I  set  my  imag- 
ination to  the  task  of  recreating  the  life  of 
Hedda  Gabler.  In  my  imagination  I  lived 
the  scenes  of  her  girlhood  with  her  father.  I 
toyed  with  the  shining  pistols — 

"Those  pistols  that  somehow  symbolize  so 
perfectly  the  dangers  this  little  coward  would 
merely  play  with,"  I  interrupted.  "How 
much  he  says  in  how  little !" 

Whereupon  Mrs.  Fiske  shook  hands  with  me. 
She  is  an  enthusiast. 

"I  staged  in  my  own  ghost  theater,"  she  went 
on,  "her  first  meeting  with  Eilert  Lovborg — 
Lovborg  whom  Hedda  loved,  as  so  many 
women  love,  not  with  her  heart,  but  with  her 
nerves.  I  staged  their  first  meeting  and  all 
other  meetings  that  packed  his  mind  and  hers 
with  imperishable  memories  all  the  rest  of  their 
days.  I  staged  them  as  we  sat  in  funny  little 
German  chapels  or  sailed  down  the  Rhine.  I 
spent  the  summer  with  Hedda  Gabler^  and  when 

63 


MRS.  FISKE 

it  came  time  to  sail  for  home  I  knew  her  as 
well  as  I  knew  myself.  There  was  nothing 
about  her  I  did  not  know,  nothing  she  could 
do  that  I  could  not  guess,  no  genuine  play  about 
her — Ibsen's  or  another's — that  would  not  play 
itself  without  invention.  I  had  lived  Hedda 
Gabler." 

"It  must  have  been  pleasant  for  Miss  Stev- 
ens," I  hazarded. 

Mrs.  Fiske  laughed  gaily. 

"Poor  Cousin  Emily !"  she  said.  "I  remem- 
ber how  biting  she  was  one  afternoon  after  she 
had  been  kept  waiting  an  hour  outside  a  little 
Swiss  hotel  while  I  was  locked  in  the  parlor, 
pacing  up  and  down  in  the  midst  of  a  stormy 
scene  with  Lovborg. 

"And  so,"  she  went  on,  "if  Hedda,  and  bet- 
ter still,  if  both  Hedda  and  Lovborg,  have  been 
studied  in  this  way,  the  moment  in  the  second 
act  when  these  two  come  face  to  face  after  all 
their  years  of  separation  is  for  each  player 
a  tremendous  moment.  To  Hedda  the  very 
sight  of  Lovborg  standing  there  on  the  threshold 
of  her  drawing-room  brings  a  flood  of  old  mem- 
ories crowding  close.  It  must  not  show  on  the 
surface.  That  is  not  Ibsen's  way.  There  are 


ACT    II.]        AN     ENKMV     OF    THE    PEOHH. 

MRS  STOCKMANN. 
Why,  good  heavens,  Thomas  .'  you're  surely  not 

thinking  of ? 

UR.  STOTKMANN. 
What  am  I  not  thinking  of  ? 

MKS.  STOCKMANN. 

—of  setting  yourself  up  against  your  brother, 
I  mean.  . 

DR  STOCKMANN. 

What  the  devil  would   you  have  me  do,  if  not 
stick  to  what  is  right  and  true  ? 

PETHA 
Yes,  that's  what  I  should  like  to  know  ? 

MRS.  STOCKMANN. 

r  But  it  will  be  of  no  earthly  use.     If  they  won't,./          gjv  >S 
hey  won' I.     '  ~~~"^ 


.  '"  Mil  if,  Katnna  Ljust  wait  a  while,  and  you  shalr\^£ 
A  see  whether  1  can'fight  my  battles  to  the  end .  /  ^^.^     6 
' '        MRS.  STOCKMANN.  '^f-  ^f^.  /} 

Yes,  to  the  end  of  getting  your  dismissal ;  that 
is  what  will  happen.  A/»ik 

Dst.  STOC-KMANN.  /^ 

Well  then,  1  shall  at  any  rate  have  done  my  duty 
towards  the  public,  towards  society— 1  who  am 
called  an  enemy  of  society  ! 

MRS.  STOCKMANN. 

But  towards  your  family,  Thomas  ?  Towards  ijs 
at  bomt-K  Do  ywi  think  that  is  doing  your  duty 
towards  th.pse  who  are  dependent  on  you? 

^ 


/ 

^A 


< 


A  typical  page  from  Mrs.  Fiske's  prompt  copy  of  an  Ibsen,  play 


ON  IBSEN  THE  POPULAR 

others — alien  spirits — present,  and  Hedda  is 
the  personification  of  fastidious  self-control. 
She  has  sacrificed  everything  for  that.  No,  it 
may  not  show  on  the  surface,  but  if  the  actress 
has  lived  through  Hedda' s  past,  and  so  realized 
her  present,  that  moment  is  electrical.  Her 
blood  quickens,  her  voice  deepens,  her  eyes 
shine.  A  curious  magnetic  something  passes 
between  her  and  Lovborg.  And  the  playgoer, 
though  he  has  but  dimly  guessed  all  that  Hedda 
and  Lovborg  have  meant  to  each  other,  is 
touched  by  that  current.  For  him,  too,  the  mo- 
ment is  electrical." 

"Taking,"  I  suggested,  "its  significance,  its 
beauty,  its  dramatic  force  from  all  that  has  gone 
before." 

"From  all  the  untold  hours,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske. 
"And  see  how  wonderfully  it  sharpens  the  bril- 
liant comedy  of  that  scene  where  Hedda  and 
Lovborg  are  whispering  cryptically  across  the 
photograph-album  while  the  others  chatter  un- 
consciously about  them.  Think  how  signifi- 
cant every  tone  and  glance  and  gesture  become 
if  these  two  have  in  their  mental  backgrounds 
those  old  afternoons  when  General  G abler 
would  fall  asleep  over  his  newspaper  and  he  and 


MRS.  FISKE 

she  would  be  left  to  talk  together  in  the  old 
parlor. 

"And  I  must  admit,"  she  added,  with  a  twin- 
kle, "that  in  those  recreations,  Lovborg  was 
sometimes  quite  unmanageable.  He  would  be- 
have very  badly." 

"Like  Colonel  Newcome"  I  exclaimed. 

"Not  at  all  like  Colonel  Newcome.  What 
do  you  mean?" 

"Exactly  like,"  I  went  on  enthusiastically. 
"Do  you  remember  that  time  when,  in  the  days 
Thackeray  was  deep  in  'The  Newcomes,'  his 
hostess  at  breakfast  asked  him  cheerily  if  he 
had  had  a  good  night ?  A  good  night!  'How 
could  I?'  he  answered,  'with  Colonel  Newcome 
making  such  a  fool  of  himself?'  'But  why  do 
you  let  him*?'  This,  of  course,  from  his  be- 
wildered hostess.  'Oh!  It  was  in  him  to  do 
it.  He  must.'  " 

"Thackeray  understood,"  Mrs.  Fiske  agreed. 
"But  I  wonder  if  he  really  thought  the  death 
scene — the  'Ad-sum'  scene — intrinsically  beau- 
tiful." 

"I  suspect  so,"  I  said.  "It  was  the  only 
part  of  the  book  he  could  not  dictate.  He  had 
to  write  that  alone.  Anyway,  Mr.  Saintsbury 
68 


ON  IBSEN  THE  POPULAR 

thinks  that  Lear's  is  the  only  death  scene  that 
surpasses  it  in  literature." 

"Yet  is  it  not  so  beautiful  and  so  touching 
because  of  all  that  has  gone  before,  because  of 
all  the  affection  for  dear  Colonel  Newcome  you 
have  acquired  in  a  thousand  pages  of  sympathy? 
So  it  is,  at  least,  with  the  great  scenes  in  Ibsen, 
meaningless,  valueless  except  in  the  light  of 
what  has  gone  before.  He  gives  us  the  last 
hours.  Behind  each  is  a  lifetime. 

"And  think  how  valuable  is  such  a  method 
of  study  in  a  play  like  'Rosmersholm,'  how  im- 
possible for  one  to  play  Rebecca  until  one  has 
lived  through  the  years  with  the  dead  Beat  a. 
Rosmer's  wife  has  already  passed  on  before  the 
first  curtain  rises,  but  from  then  on,  neverthe- 
less, she  plays  an  intense  role.  She  lives  in  the 
minds  of  those  at  Rosmersholm,  in  the  very 
hearts  of  those  who  play  the  tragedy. 

"And  how  crucially  important  it  is  that  the 
Rebecca  should  have  thought  out  all  her  past 
with  Dr.  West!  It  is  the  illumination  of  that 
past  which  she  comes  upon  unexpectedly  in  a 
truth  let  fall  by  the  unconscious  Kroll — a  truth 
so  significant  that  it  shatters  her  ambitions, 
sends  her  great  house  of  cards  toppling  about 

69 


MRS.  FISKE 

her  ears,  touches  the  spring  of  her  confession, 
and  brings  the  tragedy  to  its  swift,  inevitable 
conclusion.  Now,  unless  an  actress  be  one  of 
those  rare  artists  who  can  put  on  and  take  off 
their  emotions  like  so  many  bonnets,  I  do  not 
see  how  she  could  make  this  scene  intelligible 
unless  she  had  perceived  and  felt  its  hidden 
meaning;  nor  how,  having  perceived  and  felt 
it,  she  could  help  playing  it  well.  If  her  own 
response  is  right,  the  playgoer  will  be  carried 
along  without  himself  having  quite  understood 
the  reason  for  her  confession.  This  is  curious, 
but  it  is  true.  I  am  sure  of  it.  For,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  few  have  caught  the  half-revealed 
meaning  of  that  scene  between  Rebecca  and 
Kroll.  It  is  one  of  the  inexplicable  stenches 
that  do  rise  occasionally  from  Ibsen's  play — 
like  another  in  the  otherwise  beautiful  'Lady 
from  the  Sea.'  It  assailed  me  so  directly  that 
for  a  long  time  I  hesitated  to  produce  'Rosmers- 
holm'  at  all.  Yet,  of  all  the  writers  in  Amer- 
ica only  two  seemed  to  have  been  aware  of  it. 
"But  if  the  actress  has  not  searched  Rebecca's 
past,  the  key  to  the  scene  is  missing.  The  ac- 
tress must  know,  and,  knowing,  her  performance 
will  take  care  of  itself.  Go  to  the  theater  well 
70 


ON  IBSEN  THE  POPULAR 

versed  in  the  science  of  acting,  and  knowing 
thoroughly  the  person  Ibsen  has  created,  and 
you  need  take  no  thought  of  how  this  is  to  be 
said  or  how  that  is  to  be  indicated.  You  can 
live  the  play." 

But  with  shallower  pieces,  with  characters 
that  come  meaningless  out  of  nowhere,  could 
she  follow  this  method  of  study"? 

"It  would  be  a  mountain  bringing  forth  a 
mouse,"  she  admitted;  "and  yet  I  suppose  that 
now  I  always  try  it." 

And  it  occurred  to  me  that  probably  that  de- 
lightful confession  of  Erstwhile  Susan's  in  her 
present  play — that  harrowing  return  to  the 
closed  chapter  back  in  the  op'ry-house  at  Cedar 
Center  when  the  faithless  Bert  Bud  saw  had  de- 
serted her  at  the 'altar — had  probably  crept  into 
the  comedy  during  Mrs.  Fiske's  own  quest  of 
a  background  for  the  lady  elocutionist.  I  tried 
to  find  out,  but  she  gave  only  an  inscrutable 
smile,  expended  largely  on  Zak  who  was  visi- 
bly depressed. 

"If  it  is  a  real  part  in  a  real  play,"  she  said 
sternly.  "That  is  the  way  to  study  it." 

At  this  point  Zak,  who  is  always  right  in  a 
matter  of  manners,  rose  and  stared  at  me  in 

73 


MRS.  FISKE 

such  an  expertly  dismissive  way  that  there  was 
simply  no  escaping  the  suggestion.  I  started 
to  go. 

"And  that,"  I  concluded  from  the  steps,  "is 
the  method  of  study  you  would  recommend  to 
all  young  players'?" 

"Indeed,  indeed  it  is,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske,  with 
great  conviction.  "I  should  urge,  I  should  in- 
spire my  students  to  follow  it  if  ever  I  had  a 
dramatic  school." 

A  dramatic  school,  Mrs.  Fiske's  dramatic 
school.  But  that  is  another  story — the  next, 
in  fact. 


74 


Ill 

TO    THE    ACTOR   IN    THE    MAKING 

IF  Mrs.  Fiske  were  ever  to  take  herself  so 
seriously  as  to  write  a  book  on  the  art  to 
which  she  has  somewhat  begrudgingly  given 
the  greater  part  of  her  life,  I  am  sure  she  would 
call  it  "The  Science  of  Acting."  Let  every 
one  else  from  George  Henry  Lewes  to  Henry 
Irving  make  utterance  on  "The  Art  of  Acting" ; 
hers  would  be  on  the  science. 

It  was  one  glittering  Sunday  afternoon  last 
autumn  that  I  attempted  to  explore  the  psy- 
chology of  that  preference.  We  had  been 
strolling  through  Greenwich  Village  in  quest, 
for  some  mysterious  and  unconfided  reasons  of 
her  own,  of  beautiful  fanlights,  and  quite  nat- 
urally we  wound  up  at  a  small,  inconspicuous 
Italian  restaurant  in  Bleecker  Street  where  cer- 
tain wonderful  dishes,  from  the  antipasto  to 
the  zabaglione,  may  be  had  by  the  wise  for  lit- 
tle. Mrs.  Fiske  had  stressed  the  word  "sci- 
ence" with  positive  relish. 

75 


MRS.  FISKE 

"I  like  it,"  she  confessed.  "I  like  to  remind 
myself  that  there  can  be,  that  there  is,  a  com- 
plete technic  of  acting.  Great  acting,  of  course, 
is  a  thing  of  the  spirit ;  in  its  best  estate  a  con- 
veyance of  certain  abstract  spiritual  qualities, 
with  the  person  of  the  actor  as  medium.  It  is 
with  this  medium  our  science  deals,  with  its 
slow,  patient  perfection  as  an  instrument.  The 
eternal  and  immeasurable  accident  of  the  thea- 
ter which  you  call  genius,  that  is  a  matter  of 
the  soul.  But  with  every  genius  I  have 
seen — Janauschek,  Duse,  Irving,  Terry — there 
was  always  the  last  word  in  technical  profi- 
ciency. The  inborn,  mysterious  something  in 
these  players  can  only  inspire.  It  cannot  be 
imitated.  No  school  can  make  a  Duse.  But 
with  such  genius  as  hers  has  always  gone  a  su- 
preme mastery  of  the  science  of  acting,  a  pre- 
cision of  performance  so  satisfying  that  it  con- 
tinually renews  our  hope  and  belief  that  acting 
can  be  taught. 

"The  science  of  acting,"  she  went  on,  "is  no 
term  of  mine.  I  first  heard  it  used  by  the  last 
person  in  the  world  you  would  ever  associate 
with  such  a  thought — Ellen  Terry.  It  may  be 
difficult  to  think  of  her  indescribable  iridescence 


Mrs.  Fiske  as  Rebecca  West  in  "  Rosmersholm  " 


TO  THE  ACTOR  IN  THE  MAKING 

in  terms  of  exact  technic,  yet  the  first  would 
have  gone  undiscovered  without  the  second." 

Undiscovered*?  Who  shall  say,  then,  how 
many  mute  and  inglorious  Buses  have  passed 
us  in  the  theater  unobserved  for  want  of  this 
very  science*?  Mrs.  Fiske  would  not  say.  For 
her  own  part,  she  had  detected  none. 

"As  soon  as  I  suspect  a  fine  effect  is  being 
achieved  by  accident  I  lose  interest,"  she  con- 
fessed. "I  am  not  interested,  you  see,  in  un- 
skilled labor.  An  accident — that  is  it.  The 
scientific  actor  is  an  even  worker.  Any  one  may 
achieve  on  some  rare  occasion  an  outburst  of 
genuine  feeling,  a  gesture  of  imperishable 
beauty,  a  ringing  accent  of  truth ;  but  your  scien- 
tific actor  knows  how  he  did  it.  He  can  repeat 
it  again  and  again  and  again.  He  can  be  de- 
pended on.  Once  he  has  thought  out  his  role 
and  found  the  means  to  express  his  thought,  he 
can  always  remember  the  means.  And  just  as 
Paderewski  may  play  with  a  different  fire  on 
different  nights,  but  always  strikes  the  same 
keys,  so  the  skilled  actor  can  use  himself  as  a 
finely  keyed  instrument  and  thereon  strike  what 
notes  he  will.  With  due  allowance  for  the 
varying  mood  and  interest,  the  hundredth  per- 

79 


MRS.  FISKE 

formance  is  as  good  as  the  first;  or,  for  obvious 
reasons,  far  better.  Genius  is  the  great  un- 
known quantity.  Technic  supplies  a  constant 
for  the  problem." 

And  really  that  is  all  Mrs.  Fiske  cares  about 
HI  the  performances  of  others. 

"Fluency,  flexibility,  technic,  precision,  virtu- 
osity, science — call  it  what  you  will.  Why 
call  it  anything"?  Watch  Pavlowa  dance,  and 
there  you  have  it.  She  knows  her  business. 
She  has  carried  this  mastery  to  such  perfection 
that  there  is  really  no  need  of  watching  her  at 
all.  You  know  it  will  be  all  right.  One 
glance  at  her,  and  you  are  sure.  On  most  of 
our  players  one  keeps  an  apprehensive  eye,  filled 
with  dark  suspicions  and  forebodings — fore- 
bodings based  on  sad  experience.  But  I  told 
Rejane  once  that  a  performance  of  hers  would 
no  sooner  begin  than  I  would  feel  perfectly  free 
to  go  out  of  the  theater  and  take  a  walk. 
I  knew  she  could  be  trusted.  It  would  be 
all  right.  There  was  no  need  to  stay  and 
watch." 

"And  how  did  she  bear  up  under  that?"  I 
asked. 

"She  laughed,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske,  "and  was 
80 


TO  THE  ACTOR  IN  THE  MAKING 

proud,  as  of  course  she  should  have  been. 
What  greater  compliment  could  have  been  paid 
her?' 

And  it  is  because  of  just  this  enthusiasm  for 
the  fine  precision  of  performance  that  Mrs. 
Fiske  laments  the  utter  lack  in  this  country  of 
anything  approaching  a  national  conservatory. 
To  the  youngster  who  comes  to  her  hat  in  hand 
for  advice  she  may  talk  airily  and  optimistically 
of  "some  good  dramatic  school." 

"And  when  he  reminds  me  that  there  is  none," 
she  said,  "what  can  I  tell  him?  How  can  I 
deny  it?  I  have  half  a  mind  to  start  one  my- 
self. Seriously,  I  may  some  day.  It  is  an  old 
dream  of  mine,  for  while  I  have  never  particu- 
larly admired  my  own  acting,  I  have  always 
been  successful  in  teaching  others  to  act. 

"And  how  can  I  give  him  any  assurance  that 
he  will  encounter  one  of  the  half-dozen  scattered 
directors  likely  to  do  him  more  good  than  harm"? 
The  young  actors  are  pitched  into  the  sea,  poor 
children,  and  told  to  sink  or  swim.  Many  of 
them  swim  amazingly  well.  But  how  many 
potential  Edwin  Booths  go  to  the  bottom,  un- 
chronicled  and  unsung?  Though  I  suppose," 
she  added  thoughtfully,  "that  a  real  Booth 
81 


MRS.  FISKE 

would  somehow  make  his  way.     Of  course  he 
would." 

But  surely  something  could  be  done.  In  de- 
fault of  a  real  conservatory  and  much  chance  of 
a  helpful  director,  what  then?  In  order  to  find 
out,  I  brought  from  his  place  at  a  near-by  table 
an  ingratiating,  but  entirely  hypothetical, 
youth,  made  a  place  for  him  at  ours,  and  pre- 
sented him  as  one  who  was  about  to  go  on  the 
stage. 

"Here  he  is,"  I  said,  "young,  promising, 
eager  to  learn  this  science  of  yours.  What  have 
you  to  tell  him?  What  is  the  first  thing  to  be 
considered?" 

Mrs.  Fiske  eyed  the  imaginary  new-comer 
critically,  affected,  with  a  start,  to  recognize 
him,  and  then  quite  beamed  upon  him. 

"Dear  child,"  she  said,  "consider  your  voice; 
first,  last,  and  always  your  voice.  It  is  the  be- 
ginning and  the  end  of  acting.  Train  that  till 
it  responds  to  your  thought  and  purpose  with 
absolute  precision.  Go  at  once,  this  very  even- 
ing, my  child,  to  some  master  of  the  voice,  and, 
if  need  be,  spend  a  whole  year  with  him  study- 
ing the  art  of  speech.  Learn  it  now,  and  prac- 
tise it  all  your  days  in  the  theater." 
82  - 


TO  THE  ACTOR  IN  THE  MAKING 

"Pantomime,"  I  suggested,  "fencing,  rid- 
ing—" 

"All  these  things,  to  be  sure,"  she  agreed 
with  less  ardor  of  conviction;  "everything  that 
makes  for  health,  everything  that  makes  for  the 
fine  person.  Fresh  air,  for  instance — fresh  air, 
though  you  madden  to  murderous  fury  all  the 
stuffy  people  in  the  coach  or  room  with  you. 
But  above  all,  the  voice." 

"Mr.  Lewes  hazards  the  theory  that  Shak- 
spere  could  not  have  had  a  good  voice,"  I  re- 
minded her.  "Everything  else  that  makes  the 
great  actor  we  know  he  had,  and  yet  we  never 
heard  of  him  as  such." 

"And  we  would  have,"  Mrs.  Fiske  approved. 
"It  must  have  been  the  voice ;  it  must  have  been. 
One  would  be  tempted  to  say  that  with  the 
voice  good  and  perfectly  trained,  our  young 
friend  here  might  forget  all  the  rest.  It  would 
take  care  of  itself,"  she  assured  him.  "And 
such  a  nicely  calculated  science  it  is !  Just  let 
me  give  you  an  illustration.  You  are  to  utter 
a  cry  of  despair.  You  could  do  that*?  Are 
you  sure  it  would  sound  perceptibly  different 
from  the  cry  of  anguish?  Do  they  seem  alike? 
They  are  utterly  different.  See,  this  cry  of  de- 

83 


MRS.  FISKE 

spair  must  drop  at  the  end,  the  inescapable  sug- 
gestion of  finality.  The  cry  of  anguish  need 
not.  They  are  entirely  different  sounds.  And 
so  it  goes.  Does  it  seem  mechanical?  Do 
these  careful  calculations  seem  belittling1? 
They  are  of  the  science  of  acting.  Only  so  can 
you  master  the  instrument.  And  next  your 
imagination." 

"What,"  I  asked,  "must  he  do  with  his  im- 
agination*?" 

"Use  it,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske,  with  mild  sur- 
prise, while  the  postulant  for  dramatic  honors 
eyed  me  scornfully.  "With  his  voice  perfectly 
trained,  he  can  then  go  as  far  as  his  imagination. 
After  all,  an  actor  is  exactly  as  big  as  his  imagi- 
nation. 

"Most  of  us  would  put  the  imagination  first 
in  the  actor's  equipment.  Miss  Terry  did,  and 
I  suppose  I  should.  Knowledge  of  life,  under- 
standing, vision — these,  of  course,  are  his 
strength.  By  these  is  his  stature  to  be  measured 
— by  these  and  his  imagination.  If  I  put  the 
voice  first,  it  is  a  little  because  that  is  something 
he  can  easily  develop;  because  it  is,  after  all, 
concerned  with  the  science  of  acting;  and  be- 
cause also,"  she  added  in  a  conspirator's  stage- 

84 


TO  THE  ACTOR  IN  THE  MAKING 

whisper  obviously  not  intended  for  the  imagi- 
nary ears  of  our  young  friend,  "he  is  likely  to 
forget  its  importance,  and  if  we  put  it  first,  he 
will  remember  it  longer.  The  all-important 
thing,  then,"  she  concluded,  "is  the  voice." 

I  began  to  chuckle. 

"What,"  she  asked,  "are  you  laughing  at?" 

And  I  confessed  to  a  vision  of  Mrs.  Fiske 
discovering  Diderot  at  his  old  trick  of  slipping 
quietly  into  a  rear  seat  at  the  theater,  covering 
his  ears  with  his  hands,  and  so,  for  his  own 
greater  enjoyment,  transforming  any  perform- 
ance into  pantomime. 

"What  would  you  have  done,"  I  asked,  "if 
you  had  come  upon  Diderot  stopping  up  his 
ears?" 

"Boxed  them,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske.  "The  voice, 
then,  and  the  imagination.  And  be  reflective. 
Think.  Does  this  seem  so  obvious  as  to  be 
scarcely  worth  saying?  Let  me  tell  you,  dear 
child,  that  an  appalling  proportion  of  the  young 
players  who  pass  our  way  cannot  have  spent 
one  really  reflective  hour  since  the  stage-door 
first  closed  behind  them.  I  am  sure  they 
have  n't.  It  would  have  left  some  trace. 
Why,  the  whole  world  may  be  the  range  of  the 

85 ' 


MRS.  FISKE 

actor's  thoughts.  I  remember  how  delighted  I 
was  when  I  saw  Duse  quoted  somewhere  as  say- 
ing that  in  her  own  art  she  had  found  most 
helpful  and  suggestive  her  studies  in  Greek 
architecture.  That  was  so  discerning  and 
charming  a  thing  to  say  that  I  'm  afraid  she 
did  n't  say  it  at  all.  But  she  should  have. 

"Be  reflective,  then,  and  stay  away  from  the 
theater  as  much  as  you  can.  Stay  out  of  the 
theatrical  world,  out  of  its  petty  interests,  its 
inbreeding  tendencies,  its  stifling  atmosphere, 
its  corroding  influence.  Once  become  'theatric- 
alized,' and  you  are  lost,  my  friend;  you  are 
lost. 

'There  is  a  young  actress  I  know,  one  of 
really  brilliant  promise,  who  is  losing  ground 
every  year,  and  I  think  it  is  just  because  she  is 
limiting  her  thoughts  to  all  the  infinitesimal 
struggles  of  the  green-room,  all  the  worthless 
gossip  of  the — dreadful  word ! — of  the  Rial  to. 
Imagine  a  poet  occupying  his  mind  with  the 
manners  and  customs  of  other  poets,  their  plans, 
their  methods,  their  prospects,  their  personal  or 
professional  affairs,  their  successes,  their  fail- 
ures! Dwell  in  this  artificial  world,  and  you 
will  know  only  the  externals  of  acting.  Never 
86 


TO  THE  ACTOR  IN  THE  MAKING 

once  will  you  have  a  renewal  of  inspiration. 

"The  actor  who  lets  the  dust  accumulate  on 
his  Ibsen,  his  Shakspere,  and  his  Bible,  but 
pores  greedily  over  every  little  column  of  the- 
atrical news,  is  a  lost  soul.  A  club  arranged  so 
that  actors  can  gather  together  and  talk,  talk, 
talk  about  themselves  might  easily  be  dangerous 
to  the  actor  in  the  making.  Desert  it.  Go 
into  the  streets,  into  the  slums,  into  the  fashion- 
able quarters.  Go  into  the  day  courts  and  the 
night  courts.  Become  acquainted  with  sorrow, 
with  many  kinds  of  sorrow.  Learn  of  the 
wonderful  heroism  of  the  poor,  of  the  incredible 
generosity  of  the  very  poor — a  generosity  of 
which  the  rich  and  the  well-to-do  have,  for  the 
most  part,  not  the  faintest  conception.  Go  into 
the  modest  homes,  into  the  out-of-the-way 
corners,  into  the  open  country.  Go  where  you 
can  find  something  fresh  to  bring  back  to  the 
stage.  It  is  as  valuable  as  youth  unspoiled,  as 
much  better  than  the  other  thing  as  a  lovely 
complexion  is  better  than  anything  the  rouge- 
pot  can  achieve. 

"There  should  be,  there  must  be,  a  window 
open  somewhere,  a  current  of  new  air  ever 
blowing  through  the  theater.  I  remember  how 

87 


MRS.  FISKE 

earnestly  I  wanted  to  play  Hedda  Gabler,  as 
though  she  had  just  driven  up  to  the  stage-door 
and  had  swept  in  not  from  the  dressing-room, 
but  out  of  the  frosty  night  on  to  the  stage. 
This  you  cannot  do  if  you  are  forever  jostling 
in  the  theatrical  crowd.  There  you  lose  the 
blush  of  youth,  the  bloom  of  character.  If  as 
author,  producer,  director,  or  actor  you  become 
theatricalized,  you  are  lost.  The  chance  to  do 
the  fine  thing  may  pass  your  way,  but  it  is  not 
for  you.  You  cannot  do  it.  You  have  been 
spoiled.  You  have  spoiled  yourself. 

"It  is  in  the  irony  of  things  that  the  theater 
should  be  the  most  dangerous  place  for  the 
actor.  But,  then,  after  all,  the  world  is  the 
worst  possible  place,  the  most  corrupting  place, 
for  the  human  soul.  And  just  as  there  is  no 
escape  from  the  world,  which  follows  us  into 
the  very  heart  of  the  desert,  so  the  actor  cannot 
escape  the  theater.  And  the  actor  who  is  a 
dreamer  need  not.  All  of  us  can  only  strive 
to  remain  uncontaminated.  In  the  world  we 
must  be  unworldly;  in  the  theater  the  actor 
must  be  untheatrical. 

"Stay  by  yourself,  dear  child.  When  a  part 
comes  to  you,  establish  your  own  ideal  for  it, 


TO  THE  ACTOR  IN  THE  MAKING 

and,  striving  for  that,  let  no  man  born  of 
woman,  let  nothing  under  the  heavens,  come 
between  it  and  you.  Pay  no  attention  to  the 
other  actors  unless  they  be  real  actors.  Like 
Jenny  Wren,  we  know  their  tricks  and  their 
manners.  Unless  it  is  a  bitter  matter  of  bread 
and  butter,  pay  no  attention,  or  as  little  atten- 
tion as  possible,  to  the  director,  unless  he  is  a 
real  director.  The  chances  are  that  he  is  wrong. 
The  overwhelming  chances  are  that  he  is  'the- 
atricalized,' doing  more  harm  than  good.  Do 
not  let  yourself  be  disturbed  by  his  funny  little 
ideas.  Do  not  be  corrupted,  then,  by  the  di- 
rector. And  above  all" — and  here  Mrs.  Fiske 
summoned  all  her  powers  of  gesture — "above 
all,  you  must  ignore  the  audience's  very  ex- 
istence. Above  all,  ignore  the  audience." 

I  tried  to  interpret  the  baffled  look  in  the  no- 
longer  scornful  eyes  of  our  hypothetical  visitor. 

"But  can't  he  learn  from  them*?"  I  protested 
in  his  behalf.  "Can  he  not  perfect  his  work 
just  by  studying  their  pleasure  and  their  re- 
sponse*?" 

"If  you  do  that,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske,  "you  are 
lost  forever.  Then  are  you  doomed  indeed. 
Audiences,  my  friend,  are  variable,  now  quick, 


MRS.  FISKE 

now  slow,  now  cold,  now  warm.  Sometimes 
they  are  like  lovely  violins,  a  beneficent  privi- 
lege. Then  you  may  be  happy,  but  you  must 
not  count  on  it.  An  actor  who  is  guided  by 
the  caprices  of  those  across  the  footlights  is  soon 
in  chaos.  A  great  artist,  a  great  pianist,  say, 
must  command  the  audience;  no  actor  can  af- 
ford to  let  the  audience  command  him.  He 
must  be  able  to  give  as  true  a  performance  be- 
fore three  frigid  persons  as  before  a  house 
packed  to  the  brim  with  good-will.  That  is 
his  business.  Otherwise  he  is  a  helpless  cork 
tossing  on  the  waves. 

"I  distrust  from  long  and  bitter  experience 
the  person  in  the  theater  who  does  all  his  work 
with  one  eye  on  the  orchestra-circle.  I  could 
slay  with  pleasure  the  low  type  of  stage-director 
who  counts  his  curtain-calls  like  a  gloating 
miser,  and  who  is  in  the  seventh  heaven  if  a 
comic  scene  'gets  more  laughs'  to-night  than  it 
did  last  night.  'Getting  laughs/  forsooth! 
How  appropriately  vulgar!  See  what  an  un- 
speakable vernacular  that  point  of  view  em- 
ploys! How  demoralizing  to  the  youth  who 
comes  to  the  theater  bringing  with  him  the 
priceless  gift  of  his  ideals ! 
90 


Mrs.  Fiske  —  1917 


TO  THE  ACTOR  IN  THE  MAKING 

"After  all,  a  piece  of  acting  is  not  only  a 
thing  of  science,  but  a  work  of  art,  something 
to  be  perfected  by  the  actor  according  to  the 
ideal  that  is  within  him — within  him.  The 
painter  does  not  work  with  his  public  at  his 
side,  the  author  does  not  write  with  his  reader 
peering  over  his  shoulder.  The  great  actor 
must  have  as  complete,  as  splendid  an  isolation. 
The  critic  who  is  within  every  artist  should  be 
his  only  acknowledged  audience. 

"Besides,"  she  added,  "the  audience  often 
tells  you  wrong.  I  tremble  for  you  if  you  are 
confirmed  in  your  weakness  by  popular  success. 
Beware  of  that.  Perhaps  you  have  not  done 
your  best.  The  audience  may  forgive  you,  the 
reviewers  may  forgive  you.  Both  may  be  too 
lenient,  too  indulgent,  or  they  may  not  know 
what  your  best  really  is.  Often  that  is  the  case. 
But  you  cannot  forgive  yourself.  You  must 
not.  It  seems  to  me  that  Modjeska  once  told 
me  there  was  nothing  easier  in  the  theater  than 
to  get  applause.  Remember  that,  and  beware 
of  an  ovation.  If  you  have  had  a  great  night, 
if  they  have  laughed  and  applauded  and  called 
you  again  and  again  before  the  curtain,  accept 
their  warming  kindness  gratefully,  but  on  your 
93 


MRS.  FISKE 

way  home  that  night,  as  you  value  your  ar- 
tistic soul,  bow  your  head,  look  into  your  heart, 
and  ask  yourself,  'Did  I  really  play  well  to- 
night?' Or,  better  still," — and  here  I  caught 
Mrs.  Fiske's  eyes  twinkling  as  if  she  only  half 
meant  what  she  was  saying,  but  would  say  it 
for  the  young  man's  good, — "turn  to  the  critic 
within  you  and  ask,  'What  was  so  very  wrong 
with  my  performance  to-night?'  " 

With  which  parting  admonition  we  watched 
our  young  friend  betake  his  thoughtful  way 
toward  the  door  and  out  into  the  hubbub  of 
Bleecker  Street.  Then  we  devoted  ourselves  to 
a  most  extraordinary  confection,  the  zabaglione 
aforesaid.  It  had  arrived  unbidden,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course.  Even  this  could  not  banish  a 
persistent  phrase,  "You  must  forget  the  audi- 
ence's very  existence."  It  lingered  in  the  air 
and  brought  trooping  in  a  host  of  old  memories 
— old  memories  of  Mrs.  Fiske  confiding  her 
emotions  to  the  back-drop  when  it  was  appar- 
ently no  part  of  her  intention  that  those  out 
front  should  catch  the  exact  content  of  her 
speech,  memories  of  many  a  critic's  comment 
on  her  diction  and  many  a  player's  fretful  com- 
plaint that  sometimes  he  "could  n't  hear  a  word 

94 


TO  THE  ACTOR  IN  THE  MAKING 

she  said."     I  could  not  resist  singing  a  bit  of 
F.  P.  A.'s  "bit  of  deathless  rhyme." 

"Time  was,  when  first  that  voice  I  heard, 

Despite  my  close  and  tense  endeavor, 
When  many  an  important  word 

Was  lost  and  gone  forever; 
Though,  unlike  others  at  the  play, 
I  never  whispered,  'What  'd  she  say?' 

"Some  words  she  runstogetherso ; 

Some  others  are  distinctly  stated; 
Some  cometoof ast  and  some  too  slow 

And  some  are  syncopated. 
And  yet  no  voice — I  am  sincere — 
Exists  that  I  prefer  to  hear." 

"Charming !"  said  Mrs.  Fiske,  vastly  pleased. 

And  did  she  defend  herself1?  Not  she. 
Quite  the  reverse. 

"My  friend,"  she  confessed,  "that  was  no 
part  of  a  misguided  theory  of  acting;  it  was 
simply  slovenliness.  For  years  I  had  no  ap- 
preciation whatever  of  the  importance  of  care- 
ful speech.  Only  of  recent  years,  after  some 
preliminary  lessons  given  to  me  by  Victor 
Maurel,  have  I  learned  to  use  my  voice.  Three 
hours  of  voice  practice  every  day  of  the  season 
— that,  properly,  is  the  actor's  chore.  He  must 
have  such  practice  at  least  one  hour  a  day. 

95 


MRS.  FISKE 

With  any  less  time  than  that  it  is  absolutely  im- 
possible to  keep  the  instrument  in  proper  con- 
dition, absolutely  impossible.  Without  such 
practice  the  voice  will  not  respond  instantly  to 
every  tone  requirement;  yet  the  actor  must  be 
able  to  play  with  his  voice  as  Tetrazzini  plays 
with  hers.  Indeed,  he  must  have  more  than 
one  voice.  He  must  have  at  least  three — three 
complete  registers.  You  could  write  a  book 
about  this  long,  delicate,  mysterious,  and  inter- 
esting science,  a  book  that  every  actor  should 
study.  From  it  he  could  evolve  his  own 
method.  Monsieur  Maurel  taught  me  how  to 
teach  myself.  The  practice  followed,  and  still 
goes  on.  Only  so,  and  then  only  in  the  last  few 
years,  have  I  even  begun  to  speak  decently  in 
the  theater.  Before  that  it  was  monstrous,  so 
dreadful  that  I  should  not  have  been  allowed 
to  act  at  all.  I  should  have  been  wiped  out. 
And  I  suspect  that,  if  the  American  theater  had 
been  in  a  state  of  health,  I  would  have  been." 

This  confession  would  in  all  probability  sur- 
prise a  good  many  of  Mrs.  Fiske's  critics  as  well 
as  a  good  many  of  her  most  fervent  admirers 
who  have,  I  fancy,  been  rather  flattering  them- 
selves that  they  were  merely  growing  accus- 


TO  THE  ACTOR  IN  THE  MAKING 

tomed  to  the  articulation  of  a  voice,  "staccato, 
hurried,  nervous,  brisk,  cascading,  intermittent, 
choppy,"  or  who  had  vaguely  accepted  an  oc- 
casional moment  of  inaudibility  as  in  some  way 
an  essential  of  that  kind  of  acting  which  has 
inspired  many  a  chapter  headed  "Restraint." 

"Restraint !"  said  Mrs.  Fiske,  a  little  amused 
at  its  inevitable  recurrence.  "I  seem  to  have 
heard  that  word  before.  But  is  it  anything 
more  than  normality  in  acting,  the  warning 
from  the  critic  that  dwells  in  the  inner  con- 
sciousness of  every  artist*?  Is  it  not  merely 
good  taste  controlling  the  tumult  of  emotion? 

"There  has  been  a  disposition  in  some 
quarters  to  speak  of  it  as  a  modem  factor  in 
the  actor's  art,  but  was  it  ever  better  expressed 
than  in  Hamlet's  immortal  advice  to  the 
players'?  I  think  not.  Perhaps  there  has  been 
more  stress  upon  it  in  our  generation,  but  that 
was  merely  because  it  followed  immediately 
upon  a  generation  somewhat  given  to  violent 
hysteria  in  what  they  absurdly  call  emotional 
acting,  as  if  there  were  any  other  kind.  But 
that  was  the  exception,  not  the  rule,  a  passing 
storm,  gone,  I  think,  for  good. 

"It  offends  us  all  now;  I  think  it  offended 

97 


MRS.  FISKE 

some  of  us  always.  But  it  was  something  more 
than  an  offense  against  taste.  The  actress  who 
used  to  shake  the  very  theater  with  her  sobs,  and 
sometimes — actually,  I  have  seen  it — knock 
over  the  lamp  and  tear  down  the  curtains  in  the 
excess  of  her  woe,  was  a  humiliating,  degrading 
spectacle.  Such  acting,  the  hysterical  emotion- 
alism of  a  day  gone  by,  was  ignoble,  essentially 
ignoble.  Human  beings  are  far  better  than 
that,  less  selfish,  more  gallant.  The  woman,  on 
the  stage  or  off  it,  who  wildly  goes  to  pieces  over 
some  purely  personal,  and  therefore  petty,  grief 
of  her  own  is  ignoble.  'My  head  is  bloody,  but 
unbowed' — there  is  the  ideal.  The  quivering 
hand,  the  eyes  moist,  but  the  upper  lip  stiff,  the 
brave  -smile — that  is  it.  The  brave  smile  in  the 
face  of  adversity  has  more  of  the  stuff  of 
tragedy  than  all  the  outward  emotionalism  ever 
ranted,  more  moving  to  the  reflective  mind, 
touching  far  more  readily  the  human  heart  than 
all  the  stage  tears  ever  shed." 

It  was  probably  inevitable  that  the  old 
question  of  stage  suffering — how  much  does  the 
actor  really  feel? — should  arise  then.  Mrs. 
Fiske  warned  me  not  to  trust  any  player's 


TO  THE  ACTOR  IN  THE  MAKING 

analysis  of  his  own  psychology,  not  hers  or  any 
other's. 

"I  have  known,"  I  admitted,  "one  of  our 
most  tear-stained  actresses  to  give  forth  gravely 
a  long  account  of  how  she  did  it;  but  I  doubt 
if  she  really  knew." 

"Probably  not,"  Mrs.  Fiske  agreed.  "Often 
we  're  the  last  who  can  really  tell  how  we  do 
what  we  do.  I  remember  Rejane  sitting  in  my 
dressing-room  one  evening  and  keeping  us  all 
in  gales  of  laughter  by  telling  of  the  long, 
solemn  treatises  that  had  been  written  in  Paris 
on  the  significance  of  her  way  of  blowing  out 
the  candle  in  'A  Doll's  House.'  She  blew  out 
half  a  dozen  imaginary  candles  for  us  then  and 
there,  and  asked  us  frankly  what  there  was  to 
that.  Much  to  this  matter-of-fact  French- 
woman's surprise,  they  had  discovered  a  whole 
philosophy  of  life  and  a  whole  theory  of  act- 
ing in  something  she  had  happened  to  do  un- 
consciously. 

"It  is  a  little  that  way  with  all  of  us.  Does 
the  actor  feel  the  grief  he  tries  to  picture"?  It 
is  different  with  different  players.  I  should  say 
he  feels  an  intense  sympathy.  Knowledge  of 

99 


MRS.  FISKE 

life  and  vision  are  his  stock  in  trade.  Why,  if 
you  have  ever  wept  over  a  story  or  at  the  play 
you  yourself  know  the  feeling  and  its  extent. 
But  in  his  case,  in  addition  to  that  sympathy, 
the  more  poignant  his  expression,  the  more 
cheering  is  the  approval  from  the  critic  within 
him.  He  may  be  sobbing  his  heart  out,  but, 
such  is  the  dual  nature  of  the  actor,  at  the  same 
time  he  hears  the  inner  voice  saying:  'Well 
done  to-night !  Well  done !'  And  he  is  glad. 

"And  the  intense  suffering  he  may  feel  in 
the  earlier  performances  becomes  a  matter  of 
memory.  He  remembers  the  method,  the 
symbols,  by  which  at  first  he  gave  it  expression. 
He  remembers  the  means,  and  relying  on  that 
memory,  need  not  himself  feel  so  keenly.  The 
greater  the  artist,  the  less  keenly  need  he  feel. 
The  actor  with  no  science  must  keep  lashing 
his  own  emotions  to  get  the  effect  a  master 
technician  would  know  how  to  express  with  his 
thoughts  at  the  other  end  of  the  world.  I  sup- 
pose Paderewski  does  play  a  little  better  with 
his  mind  on  the  composition  before  him,  but  so 
skilled  a  virtuoso  can  afford  to  spare  his  own 
feelings." 

"And  you*?"  I  suggested. 
100 


Mrs.  Fiske  as  Gilberii  in  "Frou-Frou" 


TO  THE  ACTOR  IN  THE  MAKING 

"Oh,  I  have  found  the  tragic  roles  wearing 
beyond  my  strength.  Hannele,  Rebecca  West, 
Tess — such  racking  parts  as  these  I  shall  never 
play  again.  Hereafter  you  will  see  me  only  in 
comedy.  For,  let  me  tell  you  something," — 
and  her  voice  dropped  to  a  whisper, — "I  have 
retired  from  the  stage." 

As  I  knew  perfectly  well  that  she  was  at  that 
very  time  embarking  lightly  on  something  like 
an  eighty-weeks'  tour  of  the  country,  I  suppose 
I  looked  incredulous. 

"That 's  because  no  one  ever  withdrew  so 
modestly.  Usually,  when  an  actor  retires,  the 
world  knows  it.  I  have  retired,  but  nobody 
knows  it.  I  am  a  little  tired,  and  I  must  hus- 
band my  strength.  So  from  now  on  for  me 
only  'play'  in  the  theater.  But  this  question  of 
'to  feel  or  not  to  feel'  which  actors  solemnly 
discuss  until  they  are  black  in  the  face,  it  is  all 
set  forth  here  by  a  man  who  was  not  an  actor 
at  all." 

She  extracted  then  from  under  my  hat  on  the 
chair  beside  me  a  little  green  volume  which  I 
had  just  been  re-reading.  Obviously  she  ap- 
proved. It  was  George  Henry  Lewes's  "On 
Actors  and  the  Art  of  Acting."  Indeed,  it  must 
103 


MRS.  FISKE 

have  been  some  chance  reference  to  this  that 
started  the  whole  conversation. 

"Here  we  have  the  soundest  and  most  dis- 
cerning treatise  on  the  subject  I  have  ever  read, 
the  only  good  one  in  any  language.  Every 
actor  would  agree  with  it,  but  few  could  have 
made  so  searching  an  analysis,  and  fewer  still 
could  have  expressed  it  in  such  telling,  clarify- 
ing phrases.  Some  of  it  is  so  obvious  as  to 
seem  scarcely  worth  being  said,  and  yet  many 
reams  of  silly  stuff  about  the  stage  would  never 
have  been  printed  if  the  writers  had  had  these 
same  obvious  principles  as  a  groundwork  of 
opinion.  For  all  the  changing  fashions,  what 
Lewes  wrote  forty  years  ago  and  more  holds 
good  to-day.  Thus  fixed  are  the  laws  of 
science.  I  think,"  she  said,  "we  '11  have  to  re- 
name it  'The  Science  of  Acting,'  and  use  it  as  a 
text-book  for  the  national  conservatory  when 
the  theater's  ship  comes  in. 

"And  see  here,"  she  said,  turning  to  the  in- 
troduction and  reading  aloud  with  tremendous 
solemnity : 

"A  change  seems  coming  over  the  state  of  the  stage, 
and  there  are  signs  of  a  revival  of  the  once  splendid 
art  of  the  actor.     To  effect  this  revival  there  must  be 
104 


TO  THE  ACTOR  IN  THE  MAKING 

not  only  accomplished  artists  and  an  eager  public; 
there  must  be  a  more  enlightened  public.  The  critical 
pit,  filled  with  players  who  were  familiar  with  fine 
acting  and  had  trained  judgments,  has  disappeared. 
In  its  place  there  is  a  mass  of  amusement  seekers,  not 
without  a  nucleus  of  intelligent  spectators,  but  of  this 
nucleus  only  a  small  minority  has  very  accurate  ideas 
of  what  constitutes  good  art." 

"Dear  man,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske  as  we  gathered 
up  our  things  to  depart,  "that  might  have  been 
written  yesterday  or  a  hundred  years  ago.  In 
fact,  I  imagine  it  was.  Of  course  it  was.  I 
have  never  known  a  time  when  a  writer  of  the 
stage  was  not  either  deploring  the  'degradation 
of  the  drama,'  as  Mr.  Lewes  does  here  a  little 
later,  or  else  descrying  on  the  horizon  the 
promise  of  a  wonderful  revival.  Do  you  know 
that  they  were  uttering  this  same  lament  in  ac- 
cents of  peculiar  melancholy  at  a  time  when 
Fielding  managed  one  theater,  when  Sheridan 
was  writing,  and  when  you  had  only  to  go 
around  the  corner  to  see  Kemble  or  Garrick  or 
Mrs.  Siddons?" 

As  we  strolled  up  through  Washington 
Square  Mrs.  Fiske  became  a  little  troubled 
about  her  admonitions  to  the  imaginary  would- 
be  actor. 

105 


MRS.  FISKE 

"Of  course,"  she  confided  to  me,  "we  were  a 
little  toplofty  with  that  nice  young  man.  For 
his  own  good  we  said  a  great  deal  about  the 
need  of  ignoring  the  audience,  and  so  forth. 
When  he  is  a  little  older  he  will  understand 
that  to  try  to  please  the  audience  is  to  trifle  with 
it,  if  not  actually  to  insult  it.  He  will  instinc- 
tively turn  for  judgment  to  the  far  less  lenient 
critic  within  himself.  But  I  wish  we  had  told 
him  he  must  go  on  the  stage  with  love  in  his 
heart — always.  He  must  love  his  fellows  back 
of  the  curtain.  He  must  love  even  the  'my- 
part'  actor,  though  he  die  in  the  attempt.  He 
must  love  the  people  who  in  his  subconscious- 
ness  he  knows  are  'out  there.'  He  must  love 
them  all,  the  dull,  tired  business  man,  the 
wearied  critic,  the  fashionably  dressed  men  and 
women  who  sometimes  (not  often)  talk  too 
loud,  and  thereby  betray  a  lack  of  breeding  and 
intelligence.  There  are  always  splendid  souls 
'out  there.'  But  most  of  all  he  will  love  the 
boys  and  girls,  the  men  and  women,  who  sit  in 
the  cheapest  seats,  in  the  very  last  row  of  the 
top  gallery.  They  have  given  more  than  they 
can  afford  to  come.  In  the  most  self-effacing 
spirit  of  fellowship  they  are  listening  to  catch 
106 


TO  THE  ACTOR  IN  THE  MAKING 

every  word,  watching  to  miss  no  slightest 
gesture  or  expression.  To  save  his  life  the  actor 
cannot  help  feeling  these  nearest  and  dearest. 
He  cannot  help  wishing  to  do  his  best  for  them. 
He  cannot  help  loving  them  best  of  all." 


107 


IV 

A    THEATER    IN    SPAIN 

SO  nomadic  is  the  existence  of  the  players 
that  any  one  of  them  who  has  acted  for  a 
generation  in  our  theater  has  been  in  nearly 
every  town  and  city  from  Boston  to  'Frisco. 
Minnie  Maddern  Fiske,  who  made  her  debut 
without  a  speaking  part  for  the  sufficient  reason 
that  at  the  time  she  had  not  yet  learned  to  talk 
at  all,  has  in  her  day  traveled  all  the  highways 
and  byways  of  this  country.  Speak  of  audi- 
ences to  her,  and  while  you  in  your  provincial 
way  are  thinking  of  New  York,  she  is  quite 
likely  to  be  thinking  of  Kokomo  or  El  Paso,  of 
Calgary  up  in  shivery  Alberta,  or  of  Bisbee,  too 
near  the  Mexican  border  to  be  entirely  happy 
in  its  mind.  In  all  these  art  centers  she  has 
played;  for  that  matter,  she  has  played  the 
somber  "Rosmersholm"  in  all  of  them.  In- 
deed, there  are  no  nooks  and  corners  of  America 
she  has  not  explored,  and  precious  few  where 
108 


A  THEATER  IN  SPAIN 

you  could  be  quite  sure  of  not  finding  her. 
Nevertheless,  it  was  a  little  surprising  when, 
during  a  cross-country  tramp  last  summer 
through  an  abandoned  portion  of  Connecticut, 
I  came  upon  a  morsel  of  a  colonial  farm-house 
and  found  Mrs.  Fiske  surveying  me  with  con- 
siderable amusement  from  its  morsel  of  a  ve- 
randa. 

Here  she  was,  in  a  pocket  of  the  Nutmeg 
hills,  hiding  from  all  the  youngsters  who  want 
to  go  on  the  stage  and  from  all  the  playwrights 
who  feel  sure  her  doubt  as  to  the  value  of  their 
works  is  all  that  stands  between  them  and  un- 
dying fame.  Here,  beyond  reach  of  the  tele- 
phone and  the  telegraph,  she  had  retreated 
under  an  assumed  name,  an  outrageously  Ger- 
man name,  although  I  doubt  if  the  most  in- 
genuous yokel  would  really  have  mistaken  her 
for  a  gnddige  Frau.  The  Irish  and  the  Welsh 
in  her,  the  famous  red  hair,  and  the  lightning 
gestures — all  these  made  prodigious  fun  of  that 
umlaut  she  had  put  on  for  the  summer.  I  was 
suffered  to  stay  to  tea,  and  we  were  soon  par- 
taking of  it  from  an  ancient  table  there  on  the 
veranda — a  veranda  dappled  by  the  sunlight, 
which  found  its  way  down  through  the  foliage 
109 


MRS.  FISKE 

of  a  somewhat  raffish  elm  that  seemed  to  be 
leaning  nonchalantly  on  the  house.  We  had 
tea  and  a  dish  of  her  own  invention, — orange 
marmalade  and  cream, — a  confection  of  which 
she  is  even  prouder  than  of  her  production  of 
"Salvation  Nell." 

It  was  something  more  than  forty-five  min- 
utes from  Broadway,  but  except  for  the  good 
air  and  the  good  quiet,  Mrs.  Fiske  was  not 
really  out  of  the  theater.  Under  her  hat  on  the 
chair  beside  her  lay  a  published  play  that  she 
had  been  absorbing,  and  pretty  soon  we  were 
talking  of  endowed  theaters.  It  was  in  the  air. 
There  were  fairly  audible  whispers  in  New 
York  that  certain  rich  men  who  do  for  art  in 
America  what  states  and  cities  do  for  it  abroad 
were  rallying  splendidly  from  the  shock  of  the 
New  Theater's  costly  collapse  and  betraying  a 
certain  restless  desire  to  come  forth  and  endow 
the  drama  once  more. 

"If  you  had  five  millions'?"  I  asked  curiously. 

"Five  millions'?"  Mrs.  Fiske  paused  with 
her  cup  in  air  and  meditated.  It  soon  became 
apparent  that  it  would  take  her  only  a  few 
moments  to  spend  it.  "Well,"  she  said,  "I 
should  give  a  million  to  certain  humanitarian 
no 


Salvation  Nell 


A  THEATER  IN  SPAIN 

cults.  I  should  turn  over  a  million  to  Eva 
Booth  to  spend  among  the  poor  she  understands 
so  well.  I  should  turn  over  a  million  to 
Leonore  Cauker  of  Milwaukee,  who  has  taken 
the  city's  pound  on  her  own  shoulders,  paying 
for  almost  all  of  it  out  of  her  own  pocket  and 
working  from  six  in  the  morning  until  mid- 
night. An  unusual  life  for  a  fragile,  beautiful 
girl!  Of  course  I  could  easily  spend  the 
other  two  million  in  one  afternoon  in  helping 
on  the  effort  to  make  women  see  that  one  of  the 
most  dreadful,  shocking,  disheartening  sights  in 
the  world  is  just  the  sight  of  a  woman  wearing 
furs.  The  two  million,  I  'm  afraid  would  be 
a  mere  drop  in  the  bucket." 

"But  the  theater,"  I  protested  weakly. 

"Not  a  penny." 

"Ah,"  I  persisted  with  guile,  "but  suppose 
you  were  made  sole  trustee  of  a  fund  of  five 
millions  to  be  expended  in  the  endowment  of  a 
national  theater."  And  then,  before  she  had 
time  to  embezzle  this  unblushingly  in  behalf 
of  her  non-human  friends,  I  recalled  as  best  I 
could  the  project  E.  H.  Sothern  had  sketched 
in  the  book  of  his  memory.  This  was  his 
idea : 


MRS.  FISKE 

A  national  theater  will  continue  to  be  a  dream  un- 
til it  is  realized  on  the  sane  and  simple  lines  of  sup- 
plying the  standard  classic  drama,  Shakesperian  and 
others,  to  the  poor  and  uneducated  at  a  nominal  price. 
Three  million  dollars  would  build  a  national  theater 
hi  Washington.  Endow  it  with  an  income  of  an 
hundred  thousand  a  year,  and  enable  it  to  produce  a 
clasic  repertoire  for  the  benefit  of  the  multitude  at  an 
admission  fee  of  from  ten  to  fifty  cents,  the  object 
being  to  plant  broadcast  an  understanding  and  love 
for  the  best  in  dramatic  literature. 

Mrs.  Fiske's  eyes  twinkled  mutinously. 

"Broadcast?"  she  queried  doubtfully,  and 
then  cheering  up,  she  went  on:  "It  might  re- 
fine the  House  of  Representatives,  might  n't  it? 
But  how  would  they  dare  to  call  it  a  national 
theater?" 

"Because  we  're  not  really  a  nation  yet?"  I 
asked,  disconsolate  at  encountering  this  old  dif- 
ficulty so  early  in  the  afternoon,  the  inevitable 
reflection  on  our  homogeneity. 

"No,  I  do  not  mean  that.  Let 's  not  talk 
about  the  Civil  War  and  California  and  'East 
is  East'  and  all  that.  In  a  really  fine  play  the 
twain  will  meet.  Perhaps  we  are  not  settled 
enough  yet  to  have  a  theater  of  the  nation,  but 
we  can  have  a  theater  for  the  nation.  Yet  how 
would  Mr.  Sothern's  project  meet  that  test?  I 
114 


A  THEATER  IN  SPAIN 

suppose  that  most  Frenchmen  could  get  to  Paris 
once  a  year  or  so  to  the  Comedie  Frangaise,  and 
certainly  a  theater  in  the  Strand  is  within  reach 
of  all  the  people  in  little  England;  but  neither 
the  New  Theater  that  was  nor  Mr.  Sothern's 
dream  playhouse  that  is  to  be  could  be  called  a 
national  theater  when  most  of  the  people  in  the 
nation  would  never  see  even  the  outside  of  it  in 
all  their  days.  The  national  theater  must  go 
to  them.  Not  a  resident  company,  but  the  play 
that  moves  across  the  country  and  has  its  day 
in  El  Paso  as  well  as  its  month  in  New  York  is 
the  natural  development,  the  natural  expression, 
of  the  American  theater.  Let  the  founders  of 
the  national  theater  remember  that  it  will  be 
their  task  to  send  not  a  pale  carbon  copy  of  a 
New  York  success,  but  an  absolutely  perfect 
achievement  in  dramatic  art  from  one  end  of 
America  to  the  other."  Here  Mrs.  Fiske's  hand 
was  raised  in  prophecy.  "The  national  theater, 
my  friend,  will  not  be  a  theater  at  all,  but  a 
traveling  company." 

We  had  rather  good  fun  then  in  organizing 
it  over  the  tea-cups  and  at  no  expense  what- 
ever. It  might,  she  thought,  give  two  plays  a 
year,  one  classic  and  one  new.  It  might,  for 


MRS.  FISKE 

instance,  give  "Cymbeline"  or  "The  Wild 
Duck"  and  also  a  sparkling  new  comedy  by 
some  yet  inglorious  Sheridan  unearthed  in  a 
hall  bedroom  in  Greenwich  Village.  It  should 
present  its  year's  work,  these  two  plays,  for  a 
brief  engagement  in  New  York,  and  then  set 
forth  along  the  road,  coming  to  each  city  at  the 
same  time  each  year,  reaching  Philadelphia,  say, 
with  the  first  snowfall  and  San  Francisco  with 
the  first  strawberries.  It  would  be  the  best  the 
American  stage  could  do;  it  would  represent  the 
highest  achievement  in  dramatic  art.  It  would 
inspire  playwrights,  enlarge  actors,  and  culti- 
vate taste.  It  would  be  a  standard,  the 
standard,  this  national  theater  of  ours.  And 
how  much  would  it  cost? 

"Not  a  dollar,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske  in  triumph, 
"not  a  penny,  nothing  at  all;  it  would  make 
money." 

I  smiled  at  this,  a  little  at  the  spectacle  of  the 
thwarted  millionaires,  a  little  at  the  evidence  of 
the  true  theater  woman's  instinct  toward  en- 
dowment— one  of  distrust.  Irving's  feeling 
that  theatrical  enterprise  must  be  carried  on  as 
a  business  or  fail  as  art  echoes  through  all  con- 
temporary commentary,  the  deep  suspicion  that 
116 


A  THEATER  IN  SPAIN 

an  unprofitable  theater  has  something  radically 
the  matter  with  it. 

"But  the  most  idealistic  theater  can  be  self- 
supporting,  my  friend.  Idealistic  producing  is 
safe.  Sensibly  projected  in  the  theater,  the  fine 
thing  always  does  pay  and  always  will.  It  is 
easiest  to  speak  from  our  own  experience.  Mr. 
Fiske  and  I  may  be  said  to  have  had  a  fairly 
respectable  career  in  the  theater.  That  is  to 
say,  we  have  for  the  most  part  produced  only 
plays  for  which  we  had  respect.  Only  occa- 
sionally have  we  been  driven  for  want  of  ma- 
terial to  produce  plays  that  were  worthless  as 
dramatic  literature.  And  let  me  tell  you  this: 
our  finest  plays  have  always,  with  one  exception, 
been  the  ones  that  made  the  most  money.  Pur- 
suing a  fairly  idealistic  course, — not  so  ideal- 
istic as  it  should  have  been, — we  have  had  in 
our  joint  productions  only  one  season  of  pecun- 
iary loss  in  twenty  years.  There  have  been 
seasons  of  large  profit,  seasons  of  fair  profit,  and 
seasons  of  scarcely  any  profit  at  all,  but  only 
one  season  of  loss.  Remember  that. 

"I  do  not  mean  that  a  young  producer  can, 
with  a  mere  wave  of  his  ideals,  establish  im- 
mediately a  successful  national  institution. 
117 


MRS.  FISKE 

He  must  have  credit  and  he  must  have  time. 
But  our  national  theater  need  not  be  costly. 
The  best  actors'?  Well,  the  right  ones,  at  all 
events;  but  I  doubt  if  they  would  often,  if  ever, 
be  the  most  expensive.  Then,  too,  any  actor 
worth  his  salt  would  give  his  eye-teeth  for  a 
place  in  such  a  company.  For  the  training,  for 
the  prestige,  for  the  fun  of  the  thing,  he  would 
come  for  almost  nothing.  I  am  afraid  few 
managers  would  tell  you  so;  but,  appealed  to 
in  the  right  way,  the  players  are  idealistic  and 
responsive.  Of  course  there  are  some  hopeless 
fellows;  but,  then,  for  that  matter,  there  are 
some  women  who  would  go  on  wearing  aigrets 
if  they  saw  the  live  birds  torn  to  pieces  before 
their  very  eyes.  And  there  are  still  men  who 
will  go  hunting. 

"Not  that  an  endowment  could  not  be  used," 
Mrs.  Fiske  was  gradually  willing  to  admit. 
"There  would  come  in  time  a  superb  home  thea- 
ter, a  roomy,  dignified  playhouse,  a  theater.  In 
the  company's  long  absence  on  tour  this  would 
be  hospitable  to  all  the  best  dramatic  endeavor 
in  New  York.  There  could  be  a  school  to  train 
pupils  from  all  over  America.  There  would  be 
a  workshop  to  which  the  director  could  summon 
118 


A  THEATER  IN  SPAIN 

the  master  electrician  and  the  master  decorator 
of  the  world.  Then  at  its  best  the  endowment 
would  serve  to  reduce  the  price  of  seats  within 
the  reach  of  every  one.  It  would  be  the  hap- 
piest way,  I  think,  if  that  part  of  it  was  attended 
to  by  the  rich  men  of  every  city  visited.  Think 
of  it,  a  great  play  perfectly  presented  in  Denver, 
with  the  seats  ranging  at  some  performances 
from  fifty  cents,  not  up,  but  down,  and  with 
special  trains  bringing  the  people  in  from  all  the 
country  round.  It  would  be  a  joy  to  have  a 
hand  in  such  a  project;  it  would  be  a  privilege 
and  an  honor  to  appear  in  such  a  company.  It 
would  be  no  end  of  fun  to  play  before  such 
audiences.  I  'm  beginning  to  think,"  she  con- 
fessed gaily,  "that  we  shall  be  able  to  use  those 
five  millions,  after  all." 

"But  what  would  be  the  permanent  thing  in 
all  this*?  What  would  give  the  project  a  con- 
tinuity of  policy,  the  character  of  an  institu- 
tion1? If  our  national  theater  would  never  stay 
in  one  place  more  than  a  month  at  a  time,  would 
the  personnel  of  the  company  remain  fixed*?" 

"Certainly  not,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske,  briskly  and 
cheerfully  dismissing  several  members  on  .the 
spot.  "Some  might  continue  in  it  from  one 
119 


MRS.  FISKE 

year  to  the  next,  some,  perhaps,  for  several  sea- 
sons. But  the  perfect  company  for  this  year's 
plays  would,  in  all  probability,  not  be  the  per- 
fect company  for  next  year's  plays,  and  it  is 
the  perfect  company  we  must  have  every  time, 
above  all  other  considerations." 

"Then,"  I  asked,  "what  does  remain  fixed  ?" 
"The  director,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske.  "Yes,  he 
is  the  constant  in  the  problem.  He  will  be  the 
common  factor  in  each  season's  work.  He 
would  pick  the  plays  and  stage  them  and  follow 
them  on  their  journey.  I  suppose  he  would 
have  to  return  in  the  early  spring  to  set  moving 
the  preparations  for  the  season  ahead,  but  his 
lieutenant,  his  alter  ego,  would  remain  with  the 
company,  his  successor,  perhaps.  He  would  be 
the  watcher,  for  there  must  always  be  a  watcher. 
Let  me  tell  you,  it  is  not  always  the  company 
that  has  been  deliberately  cheapened,  but  the 
company  that  has  become  mechanical  and  'the- 
atricalized,' that  offends  and  defrauds  the  cities 
along  the  road.  The  three-hundredth  perform- 
ance our  national  theater  gives  in  Salt  Lake  City 
must  be  as  smooth,  as  finely  keyed,  as  careful 
as  the  first  performance  in  New  York.  It 
ought  to  be  better.  Indeed,  it  would  be  if  the 
120 


Minnie  Maddern  Fiske 


A  THEATER  IN  SPAIN 

watcher  was  true.  Really,"  she  said  with  great 
conviction,  "you  would  better  move  out  to  Salt 
Lake  City." 

So  if  those  eager  to  put  their  wealth  at  the 
service  of  the  American  theater  were  to  come 
to  Mrs.  Fiske  for  advice,  it  would  be  this: 
"First  catch  your  director.  First  catch  your 
ideal  director,  endow  him,  then  leave  him 
alone." 

Of  course  we  set  forth  immediately  to  find 
this  ideal  director  for  them. 

"I  do  not  know  who  or  where  he  is,"  Mrs. 
Fiske  admitted,  "but  I  know  what  he  will  be 
like :  he  will  be  an  amiable  and  gifted  tyrant." 

"Wilde's  'cultured  despot  of  the  theater'*?"  I 
suggested. 

"Exactly.  He  may  or  may  not  be  a  college 
man,  but  it  would  probably  be  an  advantage 
for  him  to  know  the  theater  in  other  lands,  to 
know  what  the  Russians  and  Germans  are  doing 
without  feeling  that  it  is  the  beginning  and  end 
of  his  task  to  copy  them.  He  may  be  a  culti- 
vated man,  but  he  must  be  of  the  theater.  If 
a  man  can  build  a  bridge,  we  can  bear  up  when 
he  afterward  says,  'I  done  it.'  And  our  director 
must  have  that  mysterious  sixth  sense,  the  sense 
123 


MRS.  FISKE 

of  the  theater,  without  which  all  is  chaos,  with- 
out which  we  often  see  the  schemes  of  our 
dearest  and  best-intentioned  putterers  go  comic- 
ally to  pieces. 

"It  is  this  sense  that  David  Belasco  possesses 
to  an  extraordinary  degree.  Whatever  the 
extent  of  his  vision  and  idealism,  his  under- 
standing of  the  theater  as  an  instrument,  his 
craftsmanship,  is  uncanny.  At  one  time  many 
were  disinclined  to  take  Mr.  Belasco  seriously; 
and  then  in  his  later  years  he  has  so  often  con- 
founded us  with  beautiful  things  done  so  beau- 
tifully that  in  common  decency  a  good  many 
supercilious  words  had  to  be  eaten.  Yet  again 
and  again  he  has  devoted  his  rich  resources  to 
doing  the  lesser  thing  perfectly.  Why  he  has 
done  this,  well,  that  is  the  great  Belasco  mys- 
tery. The  exalted  literatures  of  the  theater  he 
has  avoided.  I  vow  I  do  not  know  why.  It 
has  been  through  no  craving  for  money;  I  am 
sure  of  that.  To  an  extraordinary  degree,  by 
the  way,  almost  to  an  hypnotic  degree,  as  with 
all  real  directors,  Mr.  Belasco  is  equipped  with 
a  talent  our  ideal  director  must  possess — the 
ability  to  teach  the  young  to  act.  Even  if  there 
is  no  confessed  school  attached  to  our  national 
124 


A  THEATER  IN  SPAIN 

theater,  the  director  will  have  one  in  effect. 
That  is  the  part  of  his  task  I  used  particularly 
to  enjoy." 

"And  you  are  never  abashed  when  they  dust 
off  and  present  to  you  that  weather-beaten  old 
saying  that  in  the  theater  those  who  can  act,  act, 
and  those  who  cannot,  teach  acting1?" 

"Certainly  not,"  she  replied.  "In  the  first 
place,  it's  an  imbecile  saying;  and,  besides,  I 
never  said  I  could  act." 

And  I  remembered  then  how  brilliantly  they 
all  used  to  play  in  the  brave  days  of  the  Man- 
hattan Company,  how  far  more  distinguished 
were  the  performances  some  of  them  gave  then 
than  any  that  they  seemed  able  to  give  in  other 
days,  under  other  auspices.  I  remembered,  too, 
how  one  onlooker  at  her  apparently  chaotic  re- 
hearsals had  marveled  at  the  results  when  Mrs. 
Fiske  would  lead  a  player  off  into  the  corner, 
sit  down  with  him,  talk  to  him  for  a  while  in 
phrases  that  he  alone  heard,  but  with  indescriba- 
bly eloquent  gestures  that  fairly  intrigued  all 
eyes,  and  then  send  him  back  to  the  stage 
equipped,  apparently,  as  he  had  never  been  be- 
fore. What  was  her  secret?  What  had  she 
been  telling  him?  I  wondered  audibly. 
125 


MRS.  FISKE 

"I  have  not  the  faintest  idea.  How  could 
you  expect  me  to  remember?  Very  likely  I  was 
merely  giving  him  a  thorough-bass  for  his  com- 
position. It  is  often  the  secret  of  a  scene,  the 
very  key  to  the  floundering  actor's  problem. 
For  lack  of  it  you  often  see  a  performance  ex- 
pire before  your  very  eyes.  Recently  I  wit- 
nessed a  play  wherein,  early  in  a  scene,  there 
was  a  touchingly  acted,  naturally  moving  re- 
union between  an  anxious  mother  and  her 
wandering  boy.  She  expressed  the  immediate 
tumult  nicely  enough,  and  then  took  it  off  and 
put  it  away  like  a  bonnet.  She  played  the  rest 
of  the  scene  without  a  trace  of  it.  Yet  had  she 
kept  in  mind,  as  the  thorough-bass  of  her  per- 
formance, the  fact  that  whatever  the  text  and 
however  preoccupying  and  irrelevant  the  busi- 
ness, the  mother  would  really  be  saying  in  her 
heart,  'My  boy  has  come  home,  my  boy  has 
come  home/  why,  it  would  have  colored  her 
every  word  and  warmed  her  every  glance.  The 
quiet,  inner  jubilance  would  have  given  all  her 
performance  a  tremulous  overtone,  the  subsid- 
ing groundswell  of  the  emotional  climax.  I 
suppose  that  Paderewski  can  play  superbly,  if 
not  quite  at  his  best,  while  his  thoughts  wander 
126 


A  THEATER  IN  SPAIN 

to  the  other  end  of  the  world,  or  possibly  busy 
themselves  with  a  computation  of  the  receipts 
as  he  gazes  out  across  the  auditorium.  I  know 
a  great  actor,  a  master  technician,  can  let  his 
thoughts  play  truant  from  the  scene;  but  we  are 
not  speaking  of  masters.  We  are  speaking  of 
actors  in  the  making.  Let  me  give  you  an  in- 
stance. One  of  the  several  actors  who  have 
rehearsed  Barnaby  Dreary  in  'Erstwhile  Susan' 
betrayed  in  rehearsal  a  persistent,  innate  sunni- 
ness  which  promised  well  for  the  humor  of  the 
part,  but  which  ill  became  the  ugliness  of  that 
hard-shelled  skinflint.  It  was  in  the  scene 
where  he  was  developing  his  precious  scheme  for 
marrying  Juliet.  I  told  him  to  remember  al- 
ways that  he  was  marrying  her  for  her  money, 
that  with  old  Barnaby  it  was  a  matter  of  greed, 
greed,  greed  from  first  to  last.  I  told  him  to 
keep  that  abstract  quality — greed — constantly 
in  mind,  and  trust  to  it  to  color  all  his  playing. 
He  tried  it,  and  the  missing  note  was  sounded 
perfectly.  His  thorough-bass  was  there.  It 
worked.  It  always  does. 

"It  is  really,  you  see,  a  question  of  the  di- 
rector's  searching   out   the   mental   state,    the 
spiritual  fact,  of  a  scene.     Once  that  is  found, 
127 


MRS.  FISKE 

the  scene  will  almost  take  care  of  itself.  This 
is  really  the  director's  first  task,  the  study  of  the 
play  in  its  spiritual  significance.  It  is  this  in- 
terpretation he  must  supply  to  his  company,  and 
there  is  no  earthly  reason  why  he  himself  should 
have  to  be  an  actor  to  be  able  to  do  it.  Let 
him  go  away  into  the  mountains,  then,  with  the 
manuscript  in  his  valise,  and  let  him  stay  there 
until  he  understands  its  people  as  if  he  had 
known  them  all  the  days  of  their  lives,  until 
their  salient  characteristics  and  their  relation 
one  to  another  are  fixed  in  his  mind  like  the  ex- 
pressions of  a  dear  friend's  face,  until  all  the 
meaning  of  the  play  is  crystal  clear  to  him.  It 
is  this  meaning  that  he  establishes  at  the  first 
reading  to  the  actors,  the  all-important  first 
reading  when  he  assembles  the  company  before 
him  for  the  first  time.  For  the  director  inter- 
frets  the  play. 

"Of  course  only  a  play  of  some  depth  will 
reward  such  study;  but,  then,  that  is  the  only 
kind  of  play  our  ideal  director  will  concern  him- 
self with.  Once  he  has  mastered  the  play's 
meanings,  he  can  breeze  into  the  rehearsals 
confident  that  the  action  will  suggest  itself. 
Indeed,  I  am  so  sure  of  this  that  my  own  prompt- 
128 


A  THEATER  IN  SPAIN 

books  are  just  illegible  masses  of — well,  of 
mental  notes,  without,  I  am  afraid,  a  single 
suggestion  of  practical  business  that  might  serve 
a  stranger  taking  them  up.  You  might  find  the 
word  'pensive'  in  the  margin  without  any  sug- 
gestion that  the  girl  must  cross  to  left  center  and 
gaze  sadly  at  the  coals  in  the  fireplace."  I 
could  not  resist  stealing  a  glance  then  at  the 
prompt-book  on  which  she  was  working,  and 
found  the  margins  littered  with  such  phrases  as 
these  concerning  the  various  speeches :  "Soften 
all,  make  gracious,"  or,  "Sudden,  passionate 
outthrust,"  or,  "Brilliant  contempt,  inde- 
pendence, ardor,  bravery,"  or,  "Free,  brave,  in- 
dividual," and  I  amused  myself  with  the  picture 
of  the  average  New  York  director  trying  to 
make  use  of  such  suggestions.  "As  a  matter  of 
fact,"  Mrs.  Fiske  confessed,  "I  have  always  re- 
lied so  largely  on  the  help  and  advice  of  Mr. 
Fiske  that  I  cannot  work  alone.  I  am  colos- 
sally  ignorant  about  the  mechanics  of  produc- 
tion. Once  I  was  left  alone  during  a  tour  of 
the  South  to  rehearse  the  company  in  'The 
Pillars  of  Society.'  The  tangle  which  I  finally 
achieved  in  the  matter  of  'business,'  positions, 
exits,  and  entrances,  and  the  like  was  quite  too 
129 


MRS.  FISKE 

wonderful.  I  used  to  survey  it  from  the  orches- 
tra-stalls, marveling  at  the  ingenuity  of  the 
snarl,  and  wondering  how  Mr.  Fiske  could  pos- 
sibly unravel  it  in  the  few  days  given  to  him  in 
New  York.  Of  course  he  did  succeed  in  re- 
lieving the  congestion  and  setting  all  straight, 
but  I  remember  that  after  the  first  rehearsal  he 
was  in  a  cold  perspiration.  Your  ideal  director 
should  know  his  theater  as  Kreisler  knows  his 
violin,  but  much  of  the  instrument  I  am  abso- 
lutely ignorant  of.  I  suppose  fragments  of  the 
heathenish  lingo  have  lingered  in  my  mind. 
Perhaps,  at  a  pinch,  I  could  rush  down  the 
aisle  at  a  rehearsal  and  command,  'A  little 
more  of  the  baby  on  the  king!'  I  dare  say 
the  electrician  would  know  what  I  meant,  but 
I  should  n't." 

Whereat  Mr.  Fiske  chuckled  reminiscently. 
He  had  just  stepped  out  from  the  house  with  a 
handful  of  freshly  written  letters.  He  paused 
on  the  little  veranda  long  enough  to  add  an 
anecdote  to  the  table-talk. 

"I  am  reminded,"  he  said,  "of  the  only  time 

Mrs.  Fiske  ever  lost  her  temper  in  the  theater. 

It  was  the  night  of  the  first  performance  of 

'Salvation  Nell'  in  New  York,  and  we  had 

130 


A  THEATER  IN  SPAIN 

come  to  the  last  act,  set,  if  you  remember,  in 
the  slums  at  a  Cherry  Hill  street-crossing. 
There  was  a  scene  in  which  Mrs.  Fiske  and  Mr. 
Blinn  were  to  sit  on  a  door-step  in  the  deserted 
street,  and  she  had  asked  that  the  only  light 
should  be  a  dismal  ray,  as  from  some  flickering 
gas-jet  beyond  the  half-open  door  of  the  tene- 
ment-house behind  them." 

Mrs.  Fiske  paused  in  the  consumption  of  a 
wafer  just  long  enough  to  interpolate: 

"A  very  proper  light  for  two  middle-aged 
actors,"  and  then  went  on  with  her  confection. 

"But  the  excitement  of  the  first  night  had 
gone  to  the  poor  electrician's  head,"  said  Mr. 
Fiske.  "In  one  mad  moment  he  forgot  every- 
thing that  had  been  told  him,  and  squarely  on 
that  East-Side  romance  he  shot  the  whitest, 
brightest,  most  dazzling  spot-light  in  the  entire 
equipment  of  the  theater.  After  the  final  cur- 
tain had  fallen — that  came  a  few  moments 
later,  fortunately — I  went  back  to  applaud 
everybody,  and  found  Mrs.  Fiske  still  inarticu- 
late with  rage.  And  she  had  been  helpless,  be- 
cause she  had  not  been  able  to  order  the  cor- 
rection she  wanted.  She  could  not  even  tell 
precisely  what  had  happened.  All  she  really 

133 


MRS.  FISKE 

knew  about  a  light  was  whether  it  was  too 
bright  or  too  dim." 

Mrs.  Fiske  could  keep  silent  no  longer. 

"But  isn't  that  the  entire  point  about  a 
light?" 

And  quite  vanquished,  Mr.  Fiske  retreated 
laughingly  down  the  road  toward  the  post-office 
with  his  letters  in  his  hand.  We  returned  to 
the  manuscript.  She  had  been  speaking  of 
manuscripts  as  completed  things,  whereas,  of 
course,  a  new  play  must  often  be  rewritten  from 
beginning  to  end  after  it  reaches  the  director's 
hands.  I  spoke  of  one  distinguished  producer 
who  has  a  way  of  toiling  so  faithfully  over  a 
new  piece  that  by  the  time  the  opening  night 
arrives  his  name  is  quite  likely  to  appear  on 
the  program  as  co-author.  I  recalled  Arthur 
Hopkins  as  saying  once  that  any  director  worth 
his  salt  must  be  fit  and  willing  to  take  off  his 
coat,  roll  up  his  sleeves,  and  go  to  work  on  a 
manuscript  with  the  promising  playwrights  of 
his  day  and  country.  I  remembered,  too,  that 
Mrs.  Fiske,  for  all  her  stubborn  anonymity,  had 
gradually  accumulated  among  the  wiseacres  a 
reputation  for  writing  half  of  every  play  in 
which  she  appears.  I  hoped  to  find  out  about 

134 


A  THEATER  IN  SPAIN 

this,  but  only  her  eyes — concerning  the  color  of 
which,  by  the  way,  no  two  chroniclers  agree — 
made  answer. 

"Langdon  Mitchell — "  I  ventured,  giving 
voice  tentatively  to  an  old  and  wide-spread  sus- 
picion— a  poor  thing,  but  not  my  own — that 
Mrs.  Fiske  had  done  much  to  the  manuscripts 
of  the  only  two  considerable  successes  he  had 
had  in  the  theater,  "Becky  Sharp"  and  "The 
New  York  Idea." 

"Langdon  Mitchell  writes  every  word  of  his 
plays,"  she  protested.  "I  do  not  recall  that  I 
ever  suggested  a  line  to  him.  Of  course  nearly 
every  play  that  is  finally  established  in  the  thea- 
ter is  the  work  of  several  minds.  It  must  be 
so.  I  imagine  it  always  has  been  so.  Of  the 
standard  plays  that  have  come  down  to  us — 
Shakspere's,  Sheridan's,  Wilde's — we  are  apt 
to  forget  that  what  we  have  of  them  is  not  the 
manuscript  the  playwright  first  brought  to  the 
theater,  but  the  thing  as  it  grew  in  conference, 
altered  in  rehearsal,  developed  in  performance, 
and  finally  took  form  in  the  prompt-book. 
Who  knows  what  'Macbeth'  was  like  when  the 
first  rehearsal  of  it  was  called*? 

"Of  course  the  printed  classics  are  ready  for 

135 


MRS.  FISKE 

the  stage.  An  Ibsen  play  needs  no  tinkering. 
It  is  not  only  an  expression  of  genius  and  a 
drama  technically  flawless,  but  a  tried  and 
tested  play,  already  purified  by  the  fire  of  re- 
hearsal and  performance.  And  yet  there 's 
really  no  stopping  us."  Here  her  voice  sank  to 
a  stealthy  whisper,  as  though  she  suspected 
every  little  bit  of  shrubbery  of  concealing  an 
alert  little  dramatic  critic.  "Let  me  tell  you 
that  once  I  even  did  a  bit  of  rewriting  on  Ibsen. 
In  producing  'Hedda  Gabler'  I  transposed  two 
of  the  speeches!  And  what  is  more,  no  one 
ever  caught  me. 

"But  with  the  pseudo-Ibsens  and  the  baby 
Ibsens  the  director  must  sometimes  labor — labor 
systematically  as  he  does  with  the  actor  in  the 
making.  They  are  not  always  grateful;  but 
what  does  that  matter?  I  've  never  uttered  all 
the  burning  thoughts  I  have  accumulated  on  the 
vanity  of  one  or  two  authors  I  have  met,  and 
I  never  will.  Once,  it  is  true,  I  did  speak 
sharply  to  one  of  them.  He  sat  contentedly 
through  a  performance  of  his  play  and  then,  at 
the  end  of  the  third  act,  came  stormily  back 
upon  the  stage.  He  was  in  a  towering  rage. 
The  wonderful  final  speech,  he  complained,  had 
136 


A  THEATER  IN  SPAIN 

been  slaughtered,  fairly  slaughtered  by  the  ac- 
tor speaking  it.  'Well,  my  dear  sir,'  I  said, 
'bear  up.  You  did  not  write  it.'  " 

"Ah,  ha!"  I  observed,  with  the  accents  of  a 
detective. 

"But  that  happened  only  once,"  she  ex- 
plained hurriedly.  "Really,  it  is  false,  this 
idea  that  I  have  collaborated  extensively  with 
the  authors  who  have  written  for  us.  I  cannot 
write  plays.  If  I  could,  I  should  write  them." 

I  must  have  looked  utterly  unconvinced,  but 
she  changed  the  subject. 

"After  all,  why  concern  ourselves  with  the 
authors'  vanity  when  in  the  theater  the  vanity 
that  poisons  and  kills  is  the  vanity  of  the  actor, 
the  egregious  vanity  of  the  'my-part'  actor. 
The  director's  first  business  is  to  guard  the  in- 
terest, to  preserve  the  integrity,  of  the  play. 
The  actor  who  does  not  work  in  this  same  spirit 
should  be  banished.  He  never  should  have  en- 
tered the  theater  at  all.  His  attitude  is  wrong. 
From  the  beginning  he  must  have  approached  it 
in  quite  the  wrong  spirit — the  spirit  that  takes, 
not  the  spirit  that  gives.  He  should  be  shown 
the  stage-door  for  good  and  all  without  more 
ado.  There  are  really  no  terms  in  which  one 

137 


MRS.  FISKE 

can  discuss  this  bane  of  the  theater.  It  simply 
should  not  be.  Night  and  day,  from  the  first 
rehearsal  to  the  hundredth  performance,  the 
director  should  dedicate  himself  to  the  utter 
obliteration  of  the  'my-part'  actor. 

"The  'my-part'  actor  is  the  low  creature  who 
thinks  of  every  scene  in  every  play  in  terms  of 
his  own  role.  He  sacrifices  everything  to  his 
own  precious  opportunities.  What  makes  it  so 
hard  to  suppress  him  is  the  fact  that  he  is  for- 
ever being  encouraged.  Instead  of  being  shot 
and  fatally  wounded  by  some  discerning,  but 
irritable,  playgoer,  as  likely  as  not  he  will  be 
rapturously  applauded  for  his  sins.  The  papers 
next  day  may  report  that  his  was  the  only  per- 
formance that  'stood  out'  Stood  out,  indeed, 
as  if  that  were  necessarily  a  compliment !  I  re- 
member that  the  most  conspicuous  and  warmly 
applauded  performance  in  'Sumurun'  was  an 
outrageously  protruding  figure  that  robbed  of 
its  proper  values  the  more  shy  and  reticent  beau- 
ties of  the  other  playing.  //  'stood  out'  like  a 
gaudy  lithograph  included  by  mistake  in  a  port- 
folio of  etchings. 

"It  is  so  easy  for  the  unthinking  to  mistake 
for  distinction  the  'my-part'  actor's  protruding 

138 


A  THEATER  IN  SPAIN 

from  the  ensemble.  Not  at  the  first  glance  do 
we  appreciate  the  lovely  reticence  of  Venice." 

"Well,"  I  offered  by  way  of  mock  consola- 
tion, "Wilde  was  disappointed  in  the  Atlantic 
Ocean." 

"What  a  dreadful  analogy!  No,  we  need 
not  be  supercilious.  We  may  be  merely  un- 
impressed by  its  pastel  neutrality.  I  do  not 
know  what  we  expect;  the  brave  colors  of  the 
Grand  Canon,  possibly.  So  it  is  that  we  do 
not  always  appreciate  at  first  the  modest  beauty 
of  pastel  playing.  The  lesser  actor  who  tries 
hard  to  protrude  from  the  ensemble  is  guilty  of 
a  misdemeanor;  but,  then,  his  sin  is  as  nothing 
compared  with  the  felonious  self-assertion  of 
the  so-called  star  who  not  only  basks  in  the 
center  of  the  stage  at  any  and  all  times,  but 
sees  to  it  that  no  one  else  in  the  company  shall 
amount  to  anything.  Thus  are  plays  first 
twisted  out  of  shape  and  then  cast  on  the  rub- 
bish-heap. I  remember  once  attending  recep- 
tively the  performance  of  one  of  our  most  pop- 
ular actresses  in  one  of  her  most  popular  plays. 
I  was  simply  appalled  by  the  quality  of  the 
company,  compared  with  which  she  'stood  out' 
with  a  vengeance.  Finally  I  saw  a  passage  of 

139 


MRS.  FISKE 

exquisite  light  comedy  intrusted  to  an  actor 
that  the  manager  of  a  fifth-rate  stock-company 
would  have  blushed  to  have  in  his  employ.  At 
the  end  of  the  scene  I  rose  from  my  seat,  made 
for  the  open  air,  and  never  returned. 

"The  great  people  of  the  theater  have  in- 
dulged in  no  such  degradations.  Duse's  lead- 
ing man,  Ando,  was  as  good  as  she  was  or 
nearly  as  good.  At  least  he  was  the  best  she 
could  find  in  all  Italy.  The  companies  that 
came  to  us  with  Irving  and  Terry  were  artists 
all." 

And  whatever  they  might  say  of  her,  I 
thought,  they  could  never  say  she  was  a  "my- 
part"  actor  who  had  gathered  about  her  such 
players  as  Mr.  Mack,  Mr.  Arliss,  Mr.  Cart- 
wright,  and  Mr.  Mason,  to  mention  only  a  few 
of  those  who  shone  in  the  constellation  of  the 
old  Manhattan  Company. 

"Certainly,"  I  said,  "when  you  gave  The 
Pillars  of  Society,'  the  best  opportunity  was 
Holbrook  Blinn's." 

"And  when  we  gave  'Leah  Kleschna,'  my 
role  was  the  fifth  in  importance.  Do  you 
know,  the  only  dramatic  criticism  that  ever  en- 
raged me  was  an  account  of  'Mary  of  Magdala' 
140 


A  THEATER  IN  SPAIN 

that  spoke  zestfully  of  Mr.  Tyrone  Power  as 
'carrying  away  the  honors  of  the  play,'  quite 
as  though  it  had  not  been  known  all  along  that 
Mr.  Power  would  carry  away  the  honors  of  the 
play,  quite  as  if  we  had  not  realized  perfectly 
that  the  role  of  Judas  was  the  role  of  roles, 
quite  as  though  that  was  not  the  very  reason 
why  Mr.  Power  was  invited  to  play  it.  It  was 
too  obtuse,  too  exasperating,  yet  a  common 
enough  point  of  view  in  the  theater,  Heaven 
knows.  It  is  the  point  of  view  of  the  actor 
who  tries  to  thrust  his  own  role  forward,  and  he 
should  be  hissed  from  the  stage.  The  success- 
ful actress  who  seeks  to  have  in  her  company 
any  but  the  very  best  players  to  be  had  should 
be  calmly  and  firmly  wiped  out.  From  morn- 
ing till  night,  from  June  to  September,  the  di- 
rector must  war  against  the  actor's  vanity." 

Yet  how  many  have  treated  these  familiar 
phenomena  as  an  essential  part  of  the  actor's 
nature !  "If  he  were  n't  vain,  he  would  n't  be 
an  actor  at  all."  That  is  the  time-honored  way 
of  putting  it.  "Struts  and  frets  his  hour" — 
why,  it  has  always  been  accepted  as  part  of  the 
theater.  Something  to  this  effect  I  countered 
vaguely  as  I  walked  toward  the  run-about 

H3 


MRS.  FISKE 

which  had  called  for  me  from  the  livery  in  the 
village  below. 

"I  have  no  patience  whatever  with  that  an- 
cient theory,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske.  "Actors  have 
been  coddled  with  it  entirely  too  long.  They 
used  to  say,"  she  added  with  a  mischievous 
smile — "they  used  to  say  that  a  real  newspaper 
man  would  always  be  half  drunk." 

"Nous  avons  change  tout  gela"  I  replied 
with  an  accent  that  cannot  be  described.  The 
French  of  Stratford  'at-a-boy,  perhaps. 

"And  we  must  change  all  this,"  said  Mrs. 
Fiske,  cheerfully.  "What  shall  we  do  with  the 
fmy-part'  actor  in  our  national  theater"?  What 

was  the  procedure  Mr.  F 's  aunt  used  to 

recommend?  Oh,  yes.  'Throw  'im  out  of  the 
winder.'  " 


144 


GOING    TO    THE    PLAY 

MRS.  FISKE  allowed  me  to  escort  her  to 
the  play.  It  was  one  afternoon  in  New 
York  when  she  herself  was  not  playing,  and 
she  was  fired  with  a  desire  to  watch  with  her 
own  eyes  a  fairly  celebrated  actor  who  was  fill- 
ing one  of  our  theaters  at  the  time.  If  he  were 
all  they  said  of  him,  she  had  a  tremendous  pro- 
gram of  plays  planned,  all  unbeknown  to  him, 
for  his  immediate  future.  So  we  talked  of  him 
as  we  settled  back  in  the  shadow  of  an  upper 
box  to  wait  for  that  expectant  hush  when,  as 
Mr.  Leacock  says,  the  orchestra  "boils  over  in 
a  cadence  and  stops,"  when  the  house  grows 
suddenly  dark,  the  footlights  spring  to  life,  and 
at  last  the  curtains  part.  Which  was  nai've  of 
us,  for  this  was  in  New  York,  and  there  is  no 
hush;  only  the  clatter  of  unblushing  late  ar- 
rivals mingling  pleasantly  with  the  chatter  of 
an  audience  which  had  brought  its  manners 
from  the  movies. 

H5 


MRS.  FISKE 

Mrs.  Fiske  was  comfortable  in  what  she 
fondly  believed  was  the  incognito  afforded  by 
a  sheltering  hat  and  an  impenetrable  veil;  but 
had  you  been  peering  down  from  the  last  row 
in  the  gallery,  I  do  not  see  how  you  could  have 
failed  to  recognize  her.  One  glimpse  of  those 
alert  and  extraordinarily  characteristic  shoul- 
ders, the  sight,  perhaps,  of  a  familiar  hand  up- 
lifted eloquently  to  score  a  point,  and  you 
would  have  known  as  well  as  I  that  Becky 
Sharp  had  come  to  see  the  play.  But  she  was 
unaware  of  your  scrutiny  from  the  gallery;  in 
fact,  I  doubt  if  there  was  any  gallery.  Her 
all-consuming  interest  at  the  moment  was  the 
star  of  the  afternoon. 

"Does  he  know  his  business1?"  she  wanted  to 
know.  "He  does?  Has  he  vitality*?  Some- 
times I  wonder  which  is  the  more  important. 
So  many  of  these  younger  actors  seem  half 
asleep.  Has  he  dignity"?  Most  important  of 
all,  has  he  distinction?  What  a  priceless  asset 
for  the  actor  or  actress,  distinction  of  manner 
and  personality !  Three  of  the  most  gifted  of 
our  younger  actresses  are  without  it.  It  is  too 
bad.  It  is  heart-breaking.  Each  possesses 
strong  dramatic  instinct,  great  intelligence, 
146 


GOING  TO  THE  PLAY 

charm,  humor,  emotional  understanding;  but 
each  is  utterly  without  the  'grand  manner.' 
No  matter  how  earnestly  they  aspire  and  work, 
they  can  never  become  commanding  figures  in 
the  theater.  That  is,"  she  added  doubtfully, 
"unless  distinction  can  be  acquired.  I  wonder 
if  it  can  be.  Once  a  very  clever,  experienced, 
and  splendidly  trained  young  actress  played  a 
certain  ingenue  part  with  us.  She  had  acting 
to  her  finger-tips,  but  she  lacked  the  wonderful 
something  her  rather  amateur  successor  pos- 
sessed in  a  high  degree.  When  the  successor 
took  the  place,  it  was  as  if  a  rose  had  suddenly 
blossomed  into  the  play.  Distinction — that 
was  it.  Has  our  friend  of  this  afternoon  dis- 
tinction*?" 

I  refuse  to  commit  myself.  I  rather  thought 
he  did  have  dignity,  considerable  of  it. 

"He  is  terribly  in  earnest,"  I  confided,  "and 
I  have  a  sneaking  suspicion  it  grieves  him  inex- 
pressibly that  his  art  is  only  for  the  hour,  and 
cannot  live  to  tell  the  tale  when  he  is  gone." 

Her  eyes  began  to  twinkle  mutinously. 

"You  cannot  mean  it,"  she  protested.  "Do 
actors  really  fret  about  that  any  more1?  Did 
they  ever?  I  suppose  they  did.  At  least  they 

H7 


MRS.  FISKE 

said  a  good  deal  about  it.  I  remember  a 
delightfully  melancholy  bit  on  the  subject  in 
Cibber." 

And  out  of  her  inexhaustible  memory  she 
gave  me  in  tones  of  mock  solemnity  these  stately 
words,  set  down  long  ago  by  that  famous  actor, 
critic,  dramatist,  and  annalist  of  the  stage, 
Colley  Cibber: 

Pity  it  is  that  the  momentary  beauties  flowing  from 
an  harmonious  elocution  cannot,  like  those  of  poetry, 
be  their  own  record!  That  the  animated  graces  of 
the  player  can  live  no  longer  than  the  instant  breadth 
and  motion  that  presents  them;  or,  at  best,  can  but 
imperfectly  glimmer  through  the  memory  or  imper- 
fect attestation  of  a  few  surviving  spectators ! 

"But  you  do  not  have  to  go  as  far  back  as 
Cibber,"  I  put  in.  "I  am  sure  Mr.  Jefferson 
was  feeling  a  little  afflicted  when  he  said  there 
was  nothing  so  useless  as  a  dead  actor,  and  I 
know  Lawrence  Barrett  used  to  lament  lugu- 
briously that  it  was  his  fate  every  night  of  his 
life  to  carve  a  statue  in  snow." 

Whereat  Mrs.  Fiske  indulged  herself  in  the 
most  irreverent  smile  I  have  ever  seen. 

"Did  Mr.  Barrett  really  say  that?  Dear! 
dear!  how  seriously  we  take  ourselves!  And 
148 


GOING  TO  THE  PLAY 

how  absurd  when  we  are  paid  in  our  own  life- 
time so  much  more  in  money  and  applause  and 
fame  than  we  often  deserve,  than  any  mortal 
could  deserve!  But,  above  all,  how  unthink- 
able that  any  one  who  looks  at  all  beyond  the 
hour  of  his  death  could  be  concerned  with  any- 
thing less  personal  and  momentous  than  the 
fate  of  his  own  soul,  could  be  anything  but 
utterly  engrossed  by  the  intense  wonder  and 
curiosity  as  to  what  his  life  hereafter  would  be ! 
There  is  something  interesting.  The  great 
adventure ! 

"Yet,  mind  you,"  she  went  on,  "I  am  not  so 
sure  there  is  no  immortality  for  the  actor.  Of 
course  the  prodigious  Mrs.  Siddons — she  must 
have  been  prodigious — lives  in  the  enthusiasm, 
the  recorded  enthusiasm,  of  the  men  and  women 
who  saw  her  at  Drury  Lane.  But  who  shall 
say  her  work  does  not  survive  in  still  another 
way?  The  best  dramatic  school  I  know  is  just 
the  privilege  of  watching  the  great  perform- 
ances, and  I  like  to  think  that  the  players 
Sarah  Siddons  inspired  have  handed  on  the 
inspiration  from  generation  to  generation. 
Thus  would  genius  be  eternally  rekindled,  and 
every  once  in  a  great  while,  quite  without  warn- 
149 


MRS.  FISKE 

ing,  we  seem  to  be  witnessing  the  renewal  of 
the  theater.  I  know  I  felt  something  of  that 
when  I  saw  the  glow  of  Gareth  Hughes' s  per- 
formance in  'Moloch.'  But  as  for  carving  a 
statue  in  snow — " 

And  here  Mrs.  Fiske  laughed  so  gaily  that 
it  was  impossible  to  be  serious  any  more. 
Indeed,  when  she  can  be  persuaded  to  talk 
about  the  theater  at  all,  it  is  usually  with  incor- 
rigible lightness.  And  as  she  brought  her 
inquisitive  lorgnette  to  bear  upon  the  program, 
I  felt  a  sudden  understanding  and  compassion 
for  any  one  who  had  ever  tried  to  interview  her. 
I  knew  they  had  tried  again  and  again,  and  if 
the  results  have  been  meager,  I  realized  it  was 
not  because  they  were  rebuffed,  but  because 
they  were  baffled.  I  was  sure  none  of  the  tried 
and  trusted  baits  would  serve.  I  doubted  if 
she  would  rise  even  to  that  old  stand-by, 
"Mummer  Worship,"  the  contemptuous  essay 
in  which  George  Moore  speaks  of  acting  as 
"the  lowest  of  the  arts,  if  it  is  an  art  at  all," 
and  one  which  "makes  slender  demands  on  the 
intelligence  of  the  individual  exercising  it,"  the 
scornful  paper  in  which  he  describes  the  modern 
mummer  as  one  whose  vanity  has  grown  as 
150 


"Erstwhile  Susan" 


GOING  TO  THE  PLAY 

weed  never  grew  before  till  it  "overtops  all 
things  human."  Let  the  interviewer  ask 
almost  any  actor  what  he  thinks  of  "Mummer 
Worship,"  and  he  will  get  five  columns  of 
material  without  the  need  of  another  question. 
I  wondered.  I  investigated.  What  did  Mrs. 
Fiske  think  of  "Mummer  Worship"^ 

She  gazed  at  me  with  mild  surprise. 

"What  do  I  think  of  it4?"  she  asked.  "Dear 
child,  I  wrote  it." 

I  might  have  known. 

"Of  course,"  she  added,  "there  is  no  end  of 
offensive  nonsense  in  it,  and  somehow  Mr. 
Moore  leaves  a  bad  taste  in  the  mouth  when  all 
is  said  and  done.  Many  of  us  find  it  more  or 
less  difficult  to  keep  out  of  the  mire  and  pre- 
tentious, detailed  exhibitions  of  inability  to 
keep  out  of  it  are,  to  say  the  least  unpleasant; 
but  in  the  matter  of  acting's  place  among  the 
arts,  I  am  not  sure  that  even  our  dear  Mr.  Lewes 
realized  why  he  had  been  led  to  think  so  often 
that  the  actor  was  the  less  exalted  and  1pss 
creative  artist.  I  suspect  it  was  because  he 
had  seen  most  of  them  in  Shakspere,  an  im- 
measurably greater  artist  than  any  actor  we 
know  of.  None  could  be  compared  with  him; 
153 


MRS.  FISKE 

yet,  in  the  estimate  of  the  actor's  place  in  the 
arts,  they  all  have  been  compared  with  Shak- 
spere,  I  think.  But  there  are  times  when  the 
actor  as  an  artist  is  far  greater  and  more  crea- 
tive than  his  material,  when  he  does  something 
more  than  'repeat  a  portion  of  a  story  invented 
by  another,'  as  Mr.  Moore  has  it.  Yet  quite 
as  distinguished  a  writer  has  said  the  least 
gifted  author  of  a  play,  the  least  gifted  creator 
of  a  drama,  is  a  man  of  higher  intellectual 
importance  than  his  best  interpreter.  Now, 
distinguished  though  he  be,  this  writer  betrays 
himself  as  one  untrained  in  the  psychology  of 
the  theater.  We  actors  are  time  and  again 
compelled  to  read  values  into  plays — values 
unprovided  by  our  authors.  Think  of  Duse  in 
'Magda.'  Out  of  her  knowledge  of  life,  out  of 
her  vision,  by  virtue  of  her  incomparable  art, 
she  created  depths  in  that  character  which 
Sudermann  not  only  never  put  there,  but  never 
could  have  put  there." 

"I  remember,"  I  said,  "that  somewhere 
Arthur  Symons  sighed  over  Duse,  and  wept  that 
the  poets  of  the  day  left  empty  that  perfect 
'chalice  for  the  wine  of  imagination.' ' 

"Fie  upon  the  poets!"  Mrs.  Fiske  agreed; 

154 


GOING  TO  THE  PLAY 

"and  yet  it  always  seemed  to  me  that  the  rich 
wine  of  her  own  imagination  kept  that  chalice 
full  almost  to  the  brim.  But  mind  you,"  she 
whispered  while  we  drew  our  chairs  forward  as 
the  lights  went  down  for  the  play,  "as  for  the 
first  part  of  'Mummer  Worship,'  it  was  a  little 
thing  of  my  own." 

When  a  blaze  of  anger  from  one  of  the 
women  in  the  play  brought  down  the  curtain  at 
the  end  of  the  first  act,  Mrs.  Fiske  devoted  her- 
self to  a  few  moments  of  approving  applause. 

"Admirable!"  she  exclaimed.  "That,  my 
friend,  was  the  essence  of  acting." 

And  I  pounced  on  the  phrase,  for  here  was 
a  little  problem  in  dramatic  criticism  that 
interested  me  enormously,  because  it  seemed  to 
hold  the  key  to  half  the  wild  confusion  of 
thought  in  contemporary  comment  on  the  art 
of  acting.  "The  essence  of  acting!"  I  fished 
from  my  pocket  a  frowzy  envelop  on  which 
some  time  before  I  had  scribbled  sentences  from 
two  essays  of  the  day.  One  of  them  had  said, 
"A  good  actor  is  one  who  is  successful  in  com- 
pletely immersing  his  own  personality  in  the 
role  he  is  playing."  And  the  other  had  said, 

155 


MRS.  FISKE 

"The  very  essence  of  acting  lies  in  the  capacity 
of  assumption  and  impersonation  of  a  con- 
ceived character  and  personality  different  from 
that  of  the  player." 

I  showed  them  to  Mrs.  Fiske  not  merely 
because,  to  me,  they  seemed  wild,  but  because 
they  seemed  typically  wild,  not  merely  because 
these  men  had  said  them,  but  because  many  had 
implied  them  and  reared  thereon  shaky  struc- 
tures of  dramatic  criticism.  She  read  them 
with  the  smile  with  which  one  greets  an  old 
friend. 

"Speaking  as  a  dramatic  critic,"  Mrs.  Fiske 
began  in  a  profoundly  judicial  manner.  Then 
she  paused,  and  smiled  a  little  as  though  some 
mischievous  thought  were  trying  to  dispel  her 
judicial  calm. 

"But  what,"  I  persisted,  "is  the  answer?' 

"Answer?  There  are  seven  answers  which 
occur  to  me  offhand." 

"Tell  me  one." 

"Duse,"  she  replied  triumphantly.  "And 
the  other  six  are  Irving,  Terry,  Mansfield,  Jef- 
ferson, Rejane,  and  Sarah  Bernhardt.  I  am 
sure  if  we  went  back  over  all  the  reams  and 
reams  that  were  written  about  this  splendid 


GOING  TO  THE  PLAY 

seven,  we  should  find  a  good  deal  about  their 
'just  playing  themselves.'  Yet  when  the 
writers  on  the  stage  brandish  that  phrase,  when 
they  talk  of  'immersing  the  personality,'  I 
suspect  they  are  engrossed  for  the  moment  with 
personal  appearance,  mannerisms,  matters  of 
mimicry,  and  disguise.  They  are  engrossed 
with  externals.  Yet  can  they  possibly  think 
these  factors,  incalculably  important  though 
they  be,  are  involved  in  the  essence  of  acting? 
So  much  of  the  confusion  of  thought  can  be 
traced,  I  think,  to  the  very  use  of  the  words 
'mannerisms'  and  'personality'  when  they  mean 
a  larger  thing.  They  mean  style.  What  they 
see  recurrent  in  each  impersonation  of  a  great 
artist  is  just  this  style.  It  is  a  part  of  the  art 
of  all  artists,  but  only  the  actor  is  scolded  for 
it.  Wagner  is  intensely  Wagnerian  even  in 
the  most  humorous  passages  of  'Die  Meister- 
singer.'  Whistler  is  always  Whistler,  and 
Sargent  always  Sargent.  Dickens  was  always 
Dickens.  The  one  time  he  lapsed  from  his 
own  style  was  when  he  wrote  'The  Tale  of  Two 
Cities,'  and  only  those  who  do  not  love  Dickens 
at  all  like  that  book  the  best.  Only  Charles 
Reade  was  at  his  best  when  he  was  not  himself. 

157 


MRS.  FISKE 

Chesterton  is  always  extravagantly  himself, 
even  when  he  writes  for  the  theater.  Imagine 
a  Barrie  book  that  was  not  Barriesque,  or  a 
Barrie  play  that  was  not  at  all  Barrie.  In  that 
sense  Duse  was  always  Duse  and  Irving  was 
always  Irving." 

"Suppose,"  I  ventured,  "that  an  actor  in 
your  company  were  called  upon  to  play  an  old 
Scotch  gardener  in  a  towering  rage.  What 
would  be  the  essential  thing?" 

"The  rage,"  she  answered  instantly,  and  then 
added  in  a  moment  of  caution,  "though  if  he 
did  not  suggest  gardening  and  age  and  Scot- 
land, the  director  should  plot  his  undoing.  He 
should  want  him  out  of  the  company.  But 
the  rage  would  be  the  heart  of  the  matter,  the 
real  test  of  him,  the  essence  of  his  acting." 

"Then  the  essential  thing  is  the  emotion — " 

"I  am  afraid  of  the  word.  It  has  been 
depreciated  by  'emotionalism,'  whatever  that 
may  mean.  If  it  does  not  mean  acting,  it  does 
not  mean  anything.  No,"  she  went  on  reflec- 
tively, "I  have  never  tried  before  to  put  it  into 
words,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  the  essence  of 
acting  is  the  conveyance  of  certain  states  of 
mind  and  heart,  certain  spiritual  things,  certain 
158 


GOING  TO  THE  PLAY 

abstract  qualities.  It  is  the  conveyance  of 
truth  by  the  actor  as  a  medium.  What  is 
truth?"  And  she  held  up  her  hand  as  if  to 
draw  it  in  through  the  tips  of  her  fingers.  "It 
is  everywhere,  in  the  skies,  in  the  mountains,  in 
the  air  around  us,  in  life.  The  essence  of  act- 
ing is  the  conveyance  of  truth  through  the 
medium  of  the  actor's  mind  and  person.  The 
science  of  acting  deals  with  the  perfecting  of 
that  medium.  The  great  actors  are  the  lumi- 
nous ones.  They  are  the  great  conductors  of 
the  stage." 

She  laughed  a  little. 

"Are  we  getting  too  mystical*?"  she  asked. 

"Somewhat." 

"It  will  do  us  good.  But  be  sure  of  this, 
the  essence  of  acting  is  the  expression  of  the 
abstract  thing,  courage,  fear,  despair,  anguish, 
anger,  pity,  piety.  The  great  roles  are,  in  that 
sense,  abstractions.  So  Juliet  is  youthful  love, 
and  Lady  Macbeth  is  will  power  or  ruthless 
ambition,  as  you  will.  Think  of  Duse  in  'La 
Locandiera.'  As  for  her  mannerisms,  as  to  the 
extent  of  her  disguise,  as  for  the  difference 
between  her  role  and  her  own  personality,  I 
do  not  remember.  In  many  matters  of  exter- 

159 


MRS.  FISKE 

nals  she  was  careless.  You  know  she  was 
almost  theatrical  in  her  untheatricalism.  Her 
make-up  for  Mirandolina  and  Santuzza  was 
virtually  the  same.  Mirandolina  in  that  de- 
lightful comedy  is  the  coquettish  hostess  of  the 
inn.  I  do  not  remember  how  exactly  she 
represented  or  suggested  a  hostess  of  an  inn. 
What  I  do  remember  is  that  she  was  more  than 
a  coquettish  hostess.  She  was  more  than  a 
coquette.  She  achieved  a  sublimation.  She 
was  coquetry.  I  think  of  her  in  the  book  scene 
from  'Paolo  and  Francesca.'  There  she  played 
the  guilty  lover,  but  she  was  more  than  a  guilty 
lover;  she  was  guilty  love.  And  so,"  said  Mrs. 
Fiske,  "I  think  there  must  be  something  amiss 
with  those  definitions  on  the  back  of  your 
envelop,  for  when  we  look  on  the  great  actors 
of  our  time,  the  questions  those  definitions  raise 
may  vanish  utterly — vanish  into  thin  air. 
Indeed,  the  greatest  actors  have,  in  a  sense, 
always  played  themselves.  When  I  remember 
Duse,  I  cannot  think  of  her  degree  of  success 
in  this  or  that  impersonation.  I  cannot  think 
of  her  variations.  I  think  only  of  the  essential 
thing,  the  style,  the  quality,  that  was  Duse. 
Just  as  we  think  of  a  certain  style  and  quality 
160 


'When  I  remember  Duse  ...  I  think  only  of  the  essen- 
tial thing,  the  style,  the  quality,  that  was  Duse" 


GOING  TO  THE  PLAY 

at  the  very  mention  of  Whistler's  name. 
When  I  remember  Irving  and  Terry,  I  am 
inclined  to  think  that  Miss  Terry  was  the 
greater  actor,  the  more  luminous  medium,  just 
because,  while  I  can  think  of  Irving  in  widely 
varied  characterizations,  I  can  think  of  her  only 
as  the  quality  that  was  Ellen  Terry,  the  inde- 
scribable iridescence  of  her,  the  brilliance  that 
was  like  sunlight  shimmering  on  the  waters  of 
a  fountain.  When  I  think  of  Ellen  Terry  in 
her  prime,  were  it  Portia  or  Olivia  or  Beatrice, 
I  think  of  light,  light,  radiance,  radiance, 
always  moving,  moving,  moving,  always  mo- 
tion." 

I  wish  that  Ellen  Terry,  and  all  the  rest  of 
the  world,  for  that  matter,  could  have  seen  and 
heard  Mrs.  Fiske  as  she  spoke  these  words  for 
remembrance. 

"But,"  she  added,  smiling,  "it  isn't  Ellen 
Terry  this  afternoon,  and  here  is  our  second 
act." 

When  the  curtain  fell  again,  and  the  house 
began  to  buzz  even  more  vigorously  than  while 
the  scene  was  in  progress,  we  caught  at  the  loose 
ends  of  our  first  entr'acte. 
163 


MRS.  FISKE 

"We  made  our  little  definition  on  the  spur 
of  the  moment,"  said  Mrs.  Fiske,  "but  I  think  I 
could  prove  it  by  the  great  actors  I  have 
seen." 

"Who  was  the  greatest  actor  you  ever  saw1?" 
I  demanded,  who  have  a  passion  for  such  things. 
"What  was  the  greatest  single  performance?" 

Mrs.  Fiske  gazed  distractedly  about  her. 

"I  could  not  possibly  tell." 

"Of  course  not.  We  never  can.  What 
was  the  greatest  short  story"?  Shall  we  say  'A 
Lodging  for  the  Night'  to  save  the  trouble  of 
thinking  it  out?  Ask  any  novelist  to  name  the 
greatest  novel,  and  he  will  say  'Tom  Jones.' ' 

"But,"  said  the  heretic,  "it  might  embarrass 
him  dreadfully,  poor  man,  if  you  were  to  ask 
him  to  name  any  of  the  characters  in  'Tom 
Jones.' " 

"Of  course  it 's  an  impossible  question,  I 
know;  but  I  should  like  to  know  what  names 
come  to  your  mind  when  you  try  to  answer  it. 
Suppose,"  I  persisted — "suppose  you  were 
asked  at  the  point  of  a  loaded  gun  to  name  the 
greatest  performance  you  ever  saw,  what  would 
you  say?" 

Mrs.  Fiske  had  an  answer  for  that : 
164 


GOING  TO  THE  PLAY 

"Shoot!"  So  I  threw  away  the  gun  and 
surrendered. 

"But,  you  see,"  she  explained,  "I  have  had 
such  mere  snatches  as  a  playgoer.  I  have  been 
very  little  to  the  theater.  Often  the  great 
actors  have  played  here  in  the  city  when  I  was 
here,  and  yet,  evening  for  evening  and  matinee 
for  matinee,  I,  too  was  playing  and  could  not 
see  them.  We  of  the  stage  who  are  critical, 
but  responsive,  playgoers,  and  who  go  more 
than  half-way  to  meet  every  play,  have  few 
opportunities  at  your  side  of  the  footlights. 
So  I  saw  Edwin  Booth  only  when  he  was  too 
old  and  Mansfield  only  when  he  was  too  young. 
I  never  saw  him  in  his  mature  years.  If  I  were 
to  speak  slightingly  of  him,  you  might  wring 
from  me  the  admission  that  I  had  seen  him  in 
none  of  his  great  roles.  Then  I  know,  if  you 
do  not,  how  players  vary  in  a  single  role,  how 
unfair  a  chance  glimpse  of  them  on  an  off  night 
may  be.  The  worst  performances  I  ever  gave 
as  Becky  Sharp  were  both  in  New  York.  One 
was  at  the  premiere  of  the  play;  the  other  was 
on  the  first  night  of  its  revival.  I  should  not 
care  to  be  judged  on  those.  It  would  be  ab- 
surd. They  were  shocking  performances,  both 

165 


MRS.  FISKE 

of  them.  Indeed,  the  annalist  of  the  stage 
who  allows  himself  to  write  positively  on  the 
work  of  a  really  great  stage  artist  at  one  sit- 
ting is  on  unsafe  ground.  A  really  great  mas- 
ter in  any  art  must  be  studied.  We  may  not 
understand  him  at  all  at  first.  Particularly  is 
the  critic  of  great  acting  in  danger.  Great  ac- 
tors are  not  so  steady  as  great  painters,  com- 
posers, sculptors,  or  writers.  They  are  not  so 
dependable.  I  have  seen  Miss  Terry,  Duse, 
and  others  of  high  degree  give  shockingly  bad 
performances.  Personally,  I  am  cautious  as  a 
critic.  I  am  careful  not  to  give  an  opinion  on 
the  work  of  an  actor  of  great  reputation  until 
I  have  studied  him  carefully  many  times.  I 
am  fearful  of  making  a  blunder.  No  artist  is 
so  likely  to  be  over-keyed  as  the  really  great  ac- 
tor, and  if  he  is  over-keyed,  he  gives  a  hopeless 
performance. 

"There  is  one  minor  actress,  however,  of 
whom  I  have  always  been,  a  merciless  critic. 
That  is  myself.  I  acted  'Salvation  Nell' 
steadily  for  two  years,  and  in  all  that  time  I 
gave  only  one  performance  that  I  approved, 
only  one  that  was  really  good.  That  solitary 
performance  was  given,  by  the  way,  in  Bridge- 
166 


'Mary  of  Magdala" 


GOING  TO  THE  PLAY 

port,  Connecticut.  Did  you  happen  to  be 
there?"  she  asked,  with  mock  concern.  "I  was 
afraid  not.  But  you  see  why  I  hesitate  to  play 
critic  out  of  my  meager  experiences  as  a  play- 
goer. 

"Then,  too,  I  know  that  some  of  the  finest 
things  lie  unchronicled  far  off  the  beaten  track. 
I  often  wonder  how  many  of  them  I  have  not 
only  missed,  but  never  even  heard  of.  I  know 
one  of  the  most  stirring  performances  I  ever 
witnessed  was  in  a  little  German  theater  out 
West,  and  one  of  the  most  stimulating  play- 
houses I  know  is  the  Neighborhood  Playhouse 
far  down  in  Grand  Street.  It  wins  one's  ad- 
miration and  respect  at  once.  It  is  a  rest  and 
delight  to  enter  its  lobby.  Rare  good  taste 
prevails  everywhere,  in  the  auditorium,  in  every 
department  behind  the  scenes — good  taste,  good 
sense.  The  Neighborhood  Playhouse  has  made 
no  pretensions;  its  policy  is  dignified  and  prac- 
tical. The  higher  and  more  'advanced'  dra- 
matic literature  is  given  careful,  sympathetic, 
and  intelligent  interpretation.  More  than 
that,  one  is  as  apt  as  not  to  experience  the  thrill 
of  a  moment  of  genuine  beauty  here  and  there. 
And  surprises  are  in  store.  The  whole  spirit  of 
169 


MRS.  FISKE 

the  thing  is  so  fine  that  one  cannot  help  hoping 
it  will  'grow  eventually  into  something  bigger 
and  of  greater  service. 

"We  must  be  careful,  though,  not  to  take  the 
tone  of  patronizing  discoverers  when  we  tell 
of  the  out-of-the-way  theaters.  I  remember  an 
American  professor  writing  home  from  Italy 
years  ago  of  a  performance  he  had  stumbled  on 
in  an  obscure  and  dingy  theater  in  Venice.  He 
was  really  quite  impressed,  and  added  grac- 
iously that  some  of  our  fairly  good  American 
actors  might  do  worse  than  contemplate  such 
sound  and  unpretentious  endeavor.  It  was  not 
until  long  afterward  that  he  found  out  whom 
he  had  seen  that  afternoon,"  she  said,  with  a 
delighted  laugh  at  the  recollection.  "As  he 
had  not  bought  a  program  that  day  in  Venice, 
it  was  not  until  she  came  in  triumph  to  Amer- 
ica that  he  knew  he  had  stumbled  on  that  out- 
of-the-way  actress,  Eleanora  Duse." 

"But  the  great  names  that  come  to  mind"?" 
I  prompted  at  the  sound  of  one  of  them. 

"Well,"  she  said,  "I  have  played  with  a  good 

many.     I  played  with  Barry  Sullivan,  Laura 

Keene,  E.  H.  Davenport,  John  McCullough, 

Junius  Brutus  Booth,  Mary  Anderson.     But 

170 


GOING  TO  THE  PLAY 

you  cannot  expect  me  to  remember  what  I  prob- 
ably did  not  even  notice  at  the  time.  And 
having  started  at  three,  I  was  such  a  tiny  child 
when  I  played  with  most  of  those.  I  could  not 
have  been  five  when  I  was  in  Miss  Keene's  com- 
pany. Of  all  those  with  whom  I  played  when 
I  was  a  mere  baby,  my  most  vivid  memory  is 
of  J.  K.  Emmet,  and  I  have  never  known  since 
then  a  more  overwhelming  charm  than  that 
graceless  comedian  had.  I  played  with  him  in 
New  York  in  a  piece  called  'Karl  and  Hilda,' 
a  momentous  occasion,  for  it  was  then  that  Mr. 
Fiske  first  beheld  me,  and  it  was  then  that  Em- 
met sang  for  the  first  time — to  me  sitting  there 
on  his  knee — his  famous  lullaby.  He  had 
charm  in  the  sense  that  Lotta  had  it,  and  still 
has  it. 

"So  I  saw  a  good  many  of  the  great  folk  in 
those  days,  but  I  doubt  if  I  ever  appreciated  a 
performance  as  great  until  I  saw  Adelaide  Neil- 
son  as  Viola.  I  was  thirteen  then,  and  to  this 
day  I  remember  the  beauty  and  the  technic  of 
that  performance.  I  remember  perfectly  bits 
of  'business.'  Certainly  Miss  Neilson  comes  to 
my  mind,  and  moments  of  the  great  Janau- 
schek.  Then  Duse  as  Mirandolina,  as  Fran- 
171 


MRS.  FISKE 

cesca,  and  in  'La  femme  de  Claude' ;  Irving  and 
Terry  in  'The  Vicar  of  Wakeneld'  and  'The 
Merchant  of  Venice';  Jefferson  as  Bob  Acres 
and  Rip;  and  Calve  as  Carmen  and  Santuzza. 
You  may  think  of  Calve  only  as  a  great  singer. 
I  think  of  her  as  a  great  actress. 

"But  that  was  long  ago.  I  do  not  know 
when  in  later  years  I  have  been  more  impressed 
than  by  the  work  of  Frances  Starr  and  Harriet 
Otis  Dellenbaugh  in  'Marie  Odile,'  and  the 
work  of  Nazimova  in  'War  Brides.'  Then  do 
you  remember  the  work  of  Miss  Anglin  in  the 
lighter  scenes  of  'Helena  Richie,'  and  her 
beautiful  comedy  in  a  one-act  play  called 
'After  the  Ball'  ?  There  is  a  sort  of  splendor 
in  Miss  Anglin's  personality,  it  seems  to  me. 
And  certainly  I  must  not  forget  the  fine  play- 
ing I  have  witnessed  not  from  the  auditorium, 
but  from  my  own  corner  of  the  stage.  Let  me 
pay  my  respects  to  George  Arliss  in  'The  New 
York  Idea'  and  'Leah  Kleschna,'  John  Mason 
and  Marian  Lea  in  'The  New  York  Idea,' 
Tyrone  Power  in  'Mary  of  Magdala,'  Hoi- 
brook  Blinn  and  Gilda  Varesi  in  'Salvation 
Nell,'  William  B.  Mack  in  'Kleschna'  and 
'Hedda  Gabler,'  and  Carlotta  Nillson  in 
172 


GOING  TO  THE  PLAY 

'Hedda.'  How  many  of  these  come  to  mind! 
There  was  Fuller  Mellish  and  Albert  Bruning 
in  'Rosmersholm,'  Arthur  Byron  in  The  High 
Road,'  and  Florine  Arnold  as  Ma  in  'Mrs. 
Bumpstead-Leigh.'  There  was  Frederic  de 
Belleville  in  'Little  Italy*  and  'Divorgons'; 
there  was  Max  Figman  in  'Divorgons.'  I  can 
never  forget  the  exquisite  performance  of  Percy 
Standing  as  the  jailor  in  'Lady  Betty  Martin- 
gale/ How  can  I  hope  to  tell  you  all  I  have 
admired!  As  for  the  best  of  all,  I  suppose  it 
was  something  of  Duse's.  Or  Terry's,  perhaps. 
But  there  I  go  again.  I  do  not  know." 

And  there  went  the  curtain  again.  The  third 
and  last  act  was  on,  and  the  few  moments  of 
reminiscence  were  over. 

These  were  fleeting,  haphazard  reminiscences 
of  Mrs.  Fiske  as  a  playgoer.  Her  reminiscences 
as  an  actress  may  not  be  set  down  here,  for  her 
thoughts  are  too  much  of  to-day  and  to-mor- 
row for  the  past  to  find  much  place  even  in  her 
most  idle  conversation.  We  all  know  that  the 
story  of  her  life  on  the  stage,  an  adventurous, 
multitudinous  career  covering  nearly  half  a  cen- 
tury of  the  American  theater,  would  be  en- 

173 


MRS.  FISKE 

grossing  reading,  but  it  is  hard  for  me  to  im- 
agine her  ever  becoming  sufficiently  interested 
in  that  story  to  set  it  down  on  paper. 

After  I  had  lured  a  cab  out  of  the  jam  of 
traffic  in  Forty-second  Street  that  afternoon 
and  helped  her  into  it,  I  thought,  as  I  walked 
away,  how  amazingly  long  and  varied  that 
story  would  be.  Most  of  the  present  genera- 
tion of  playgoers  would  expect  to  find  little 
beyond  the  chapters  dealing  with  that  most  sig- 
nificant and  most  productive  period  of  her 
career,  the  years  of  the  Manhattan  Company, 
from  her  appearance  as  Tess  to  the  presentation 
here  and  in  Chicago  of  Hauptmann's  wonder- 
ful "Hannele."  But  there  would  be  many 
other  chapters. 

The  story  would  have  to  account  for  a  very 
small  actress  trotting  obliviously  through  the 
children's  roles  back  in  the  early  seventies  in  the 
cavernous  playhouses  along  the  lower  reaches 
of  the  Mississippi.  It  would  then  have  to  ac- 
count for  the  spirited  and  capricious  Minnie 
Maddern  journeying  all  over  America  in  the 
hoidenish  comedies  of  a  day  gone  by;  for  the 
new  actress  named  Mrs.  Fiske  who  came  back 
to  the  stage  in  the  nineties  to  play  some  of  the 

174 


GOING  TO  THE  PLAY 

most  somber  tragedies  of  our  time,  and  to  share 
with  Mr.  Fiske  and  the  independents  the 
mighty  battle  against  the  syndicate;  then  for 
the  glittering  comedienne  who  is  even  now  re- 
visiting old  theaters  and  old  friends  the  coun- 
try over  as  the  lady  elocutionist  in  "Erstwhile 
Susan."  And  even  then  the  story  would  not 
be  finished. 

If  I  had  anything  to  say  about  it,  which 
seems  wildly  improbable,  I  am  sure  the  first 
chapter  would  tell  of  her  appearance  in  "Mac- 
beth." Every  once  in  so  often  some  critic, 
newly  impressed  by  her  capacity  to  represent 
will  power  incarnate,  has  been  inspired  to  at 
least  a  column  of  which  the  gist  is  that  he  would 
like  to  see  her  play  "Macbeth,"  ignoring  the 
fact  that  she  did  play  it  once  with  sensational 
effect,  although  it  must  be  admitted  she  was  not 
suffered  to  be  the  bloody  lady  of  Inverness,  but 
was  compelled  to  hide  her  light  as  the  crowned 
child  who  rises  from  the  caldron  in  the  black 
and  midnight  cavern  to  make  the  prophecy 
about  Great  Birnam  Wood.  By  way  of  pref- 
ace, this  child  must  exclaim : 

Be  lion-mettled,  proud,  and  take  no  care 

Who  chafes,  who  frets  or  where  conspirers  are! 

175 


MRS.  FISKE 

But,  unorthodox  even  then,  she  besought  him 
to  be  indifferent  to  "persipers."  She  tried  this 
new  reading  at  the  first  performance  with  de- 
vastating effect,  particularly  on  the  Macbeth  of 
the  evening,  no  less  a  person,  as  it  happened, 
than  Barry  Sullivan.  He  left  the  stage  a  shat- 
tered being,  but  when  the  culprit  was  brought 
before  him,  he  could  only  roar  with  laughter  at 
the  sight  of  so  preposterously  diminutive  an  ac- 
tress and  promise  forthwith  to  buy  her  a  lol- 
lypop.  And  he  did  buy  it.  It  was  probably 
that  new  and  fascinating  word  which  fastened 
that  adventure  in  her  memory  and  so  brought 
it  in  time  to  us. 

The  account  of  her  appearance  in  "Pina- 
fore" would  have  to  come  later,  for  the  juvenile 
companies  which  are  described  in  the  first  chap- 
ter of  so  many  stage  biographies  found  Minnie 
Maddern  already  a  veteran.  There  would 
have  to  be  a  chapter  devoted  to  the  time  when 
she  sang  that  imperishable  opera  for  a  hundred 
performances,  if  for  no  other  reason  than  the 
rather  startling  one  that  she  was  not  the  Jose- 
phine or  even  the  Hebe,  but  that  lowly  suitor, 
Ralph  Rackstraw. 

One  chapter  would  cover  the  painful  transi- 
176 


.  Mrs.  Fiske  as  Tess 


GOING  TO  THE  PLAY 

tion  period  of  her  early  teens  when,  at  twelve  or 
thirteen,  she  would  step  boldly  forth  as  Louise 
in  "The  Two  Orphans,"  perhaps,  or  as  Lucy 
in  "The  Streets  of  New  York,"  and  then  strug- 
gle during  the  next  week  to  conceal  and  nul- 
lify her  ambitious  legs  beneath  the  short  frocks 
of  Little  Eva. 

In  that  story  old  friends  of  all  of  us  would 
enter  for  a  time  and  disappear.  Ethelbert 
Nevin,  Eva  Booth,  Madame  Rejane — who 
knows  whom  we  might  not  meet?  Out  in 
Denver,  for  instance,  we  would  be  sure  to  meet 
Eugene  Field,  the  Eugene  Field  of  the  needy 
"Tribune"  days  when  red-haired  Minnie  Mad- 
dern  toured  the  far  West  and  tried  to  be  just 
as  much  like  Lotta  as  possible.  Then  was  the 
Tabor  Grand  in  its  glory,  that  celebrated  op'ry- 
house  where  Field  saw  "Modjesky  ez  Cameel" 
and  even  tried  to  disrupt  her  performance,  Mrs. 
Fiske  tells  me,  by  a  sepulchral  cough  of  which 
he  was  inordinately  proud.  He  would  prac- 
tise it  long  and  patiently  in  the  open  country, 
and  then  produce  it  at  the  theater  in  all  its 
beauty  until  the  ushers  dragged  him  to  the 
street.  On  little  Miss  Maddern,  however,  he 
would  expend  such  flattering  attention  and  such 
179 


MRS.  FISKE 

horny-handed  appreciation  that  at  last  she  was 
betrayed  into  coming  happily  before  the  cur- 
tain and  blushing  over  a  bunch  of  violets  that 
hurtled  down  at  her  feet  from  the  Field  box. 
She  bent  to  pick  them  up,  and  then  the  happi- 
ness was  his,  for  back  they  were  yanked  across 
the  footlights.  He  had  tied  a  string  to  them. 
Not  that  she  learned  enough  from  that  bitter  ex- 
perience, for  after  the  engagement,  at  the  fare- 
well dinner  they  gave  her,  she  was  genuinely 
touched  when  Field  made  a  glowing  speech,  and 
in  behalf  of  the  "gentlemen  of  the  Denver 
press"  placed  in  her  hands  a  handsome  jewel- 
case.  She  made  a  tremulous  little  speech  of 
acceptance,  and  then  opened  the  case.  Within 
were  ear-rings,  two  of  them,  each  made  of  glass 
and  each  the  size  of  a  seckel  pear.  The  fury 
at  herself  for  letting  them  take  her  in  still 
burns. 

"I  might  have  known,"  she  groaned  when  I 
brought  the  story  to  her  for  verification.  "I 
suppose  all  the  'gentlemen  of  the  Denver  press' 
in  those  days  could  not  have  raised  .ten  dollars 
among  them." 

Eugene  Field,  wag  and  chivalrous  comrade, 
passes  out  of  the  story  in  time,  but  then  enters 
180 


GOING  TO  THE  PLAY 

Professor  Copeland,  the  beloved  "Copey"  of 
Harvard,  who  has  only  to  intimate  that  he 
might  read  a  bit  of  Kipling  at  the  Harvard 
Club  to  pack  to  the  doors  that  New  York 
gathering-place  of  his  old  boys.  A  formal  and 
forbidding  biography  of  Mrs.  Fiske  might  tell 
of  the  lecture  on  her  art  she  once  delivered — in 
a  moment  of  abstraction,  I  suspect — from  the 
stage  of  Sanders  Theater  in  Cambridge,  but  the 
story  we  are  after  will  tell  rather  of  the  time 
she  journeyed  out  there  to  have  tea  at  the  Hollis 
with  Professor  Copeland.  The  old  "Advo- 
cate" boys  still  like  to  tell  how  they  waylaid 
her  at  the  station,  bore  her  in  triumph  to  the 
"Advocate"  office,  and  so  lavished  their  atten- 
tions on  her  that  the  afternoon  was  half  spent 
before  a  stern  messenger-boy  appeared  with  a 
note  for  her.  One  glance  at  it,  and  with  over- 
whelming gestures  of  despair,  contrition,  and 
farewell,  she  vanished  from  their  sight.  The 
message  had  fluttered  unheeded  to  the  floor. 
It  was  simply  this,  brief,  but  imperious,  "Min- 
nie, come  over  to  Copey's." 

We  should  meet  Copeland,  then,  and  Mod- 
jeska  and  Ellen  Terry,  and  Charles  Coghlan 
and  Lotta  and  Janauschek.     Not  the  Lotta  of 
181 


MRS.  FISKE 

the  sixties  and  seventies,  but  the  Miss  Crabtree 
who  lives  in  sedate  retirement,  and  whom  Mrs. 
Fiske  visits  whenever  she  is  in  Boston,  to  come 
away  each  time  filled  with  wonder  at  a  charm 
and  comic  spirit  that  have  never  flagged.  Not 
the  Janauschek  of  the  thunderous  and  bosom- 
beating  times,  but  the  kindly  Hausfrau  who 
used  to  search  her  memories  of  the  palmy  days 
as  she  rocked  comfortably  in  the  evenings  on  the 
veranda  of  Mrs.  Fiske's  home  in  New  York. 

And  if  it  were  left  for  me  to  write  that  story, 
I  should  certainly  want  some  reference  to 
"Fogg's  Ferry,"  the  wild  Western  melodrama 
with  which  in  the  early  eighties  Miss  Maddern 
herself  came  out  of  the  West.  Only  the  other 
day  the  man  who  wrote  it  passed  on.  It  was 
her  first  appearance  in  our  part  of  the  country 
as  a  star,  and  she  could  not  have  been  more 
than  sixteen  at  the  time.  Not  from  her,  but 
as  a  friend  of  a  friend  of  Frohman's,  I  learned 
how  profound  was  the  impression  she  made  then 
on  two  young  adventurers  of  the  theater  who 
crossed  her  trail  in  Boston  and  aspired  to  place 
her  under  contract  forever  and  ever.  One  was 
named  Charles  Frohman,  the  other  was  named 
David  Belasco.  One  evening  they  met  in  the 
182 


GOING  TO  THE  PLAY 

lobby  of  the  old  Boston  Museum  and  poured 
forth  to  each  other  their  faith  in  the  new  star 
that  had  shot  across  the  theatrical  firmament. 
Soon  Frohman  became  so  worked  up  that  he 
borrowed  two  dollars  and  hurried  away.  It  i3 
not  puzzling  that  he  should  have  had  to  borrow 
that  staggering  sum  in  those  lean  days,  but  it 
is  a  little  mysterious  that  Belasco  should  have 
had  it  to  lend.  With  it  Frohman  made  his 
way  to  a  florist's  and  demanded  as  fine  a  bou- 
quet as  his  funds  would  buy.  Then,  with  his 
arms  full  of  flowers  and  his  head  full  of  dreams, 
he  made  for  the  theater  where  "Fogg's  Ferry" 
was  the  bill.  As  he  approached  the  alley  lead- 
ing to  the  stage-door  his  heart  sank  at  a  strange 
apparition.  There,  entering  the  same  alley, 
with  the  same  token  under  his  arm,  was  the 
young  Belasco.  It  was  too  much.  The  two 
met  at  the  stage-door,  each  grimly  determined 
that  his  flowers  and  his  offer  should  go  in  first. 
A  scuffle  followed,  and  soon  the  stage-hands 
were  rushing  to  the  heroine  of  the  story  with 
accounts  of  the  pitched  battle  between  her  ad- 
mirers. She  could  not  have  guessed  that  the 
fight  for  her  favor  was  between  two  who  would 
achieve  international  reputation  in  the  theater 

183 


MRS.  FISKE 

of  twenty  years  after.  She  was  merely  grati- 
fied, exhilarated,  and  delighted  beyond  meas- 
ure by  the  flowers  and  the  fight.  I  have  never 
been  able  to  learn  whose  bouquet  did  pass  the 
door  first,  but  I  suspect  it  was  Frohman's,  for 
thirty  years  later  when  he  hobbled  back-stage 
at  the  Hudson  Theater  while  she  was  play- 
ing there  in  "The  High  Road,"  his  first  greet- 
ing was,  "Did  you  keep  the  flowers'?" 
Whereat  she  beamed  upon  him  and  held  out 
both  her  hands. 

"O  my  dear  Mr.  Frohman,"  she  said,  "would 
that  I  could  have !" 

But  then,  that  is  just  a  scrap  from  a  story  I 
hope  will  be  written  one  of  these  fine  days — by 
somebody  else. 


VI 

POSTSCRIPT 

SO  many  actors  have  entered  Mrs.  Fiske's 
company  and  come  out  of  it  better  actors, 
so  many  youngsters  have  gone  to  her  for  advice 
and  come  away  with  a  widened  vision  and  re- 
newed inspiration,  that  there  has  long  been  a 
call  for  some  exposition  of  her  "theater  wis- 
dom," some  expression  of  the  philosophy  of  one 
who  has  always  been  vaguely  accounted  "the 
most  interesting  woman  on  the  American  stage." 
It  would  have  been  a  hopeless  task  to  overcome 
her  diffidence  and  preoccupation  sufficiently  to 
persuade  her  to  write  her  own  treatise ;  it  would 
have  been  unthinkably  out  of  character  for  her 
to  sign  her  name  to  another's  screed,  as  many 
of  our  players  do.  There  seemed  to  be  no 
other  way  than  for  some  one  who  knew  her  to 
summon  his  memories  of  casual  and  incautious 
conversations,  to  chronicle  her  table-talk, 
faintly,  but  faithfully.  That  is  how  the  pre- 

185 


MRS.  FISKE 

ceding  chapters  came  to  be  written.  If  the 
reader  has  not  found  them  entertaining  and 
stimulating,  the  fault  is  not  Mrs.  Fiske's. 

Her  sentiments  on  the  repertory  idea  aroused 
the  most  debate.  I  think  her  position  in  the 
matter  is  essentially  sound  and  salutary.  She 
would  give  to  each  "movement"  in  the  theater, 
to  each  person  with  a  project,  large  or  small, 
this  simple  and  single  ideal — the  best  possible 
performance  of  the  immediate  play  in  hand. 
Aim  for  that  directly  and  for  that  alone.  Then 
the  training  of  the  actors,  the  encouragement  of 
playwrights,  the  upbuilding  of  a  responsive  pub- 
lic, and  the  slow  formation  of  a  national  thea- 
ter will  take  care  of  themselves. 

The  instinct  that  the  play's  the  thing  has 
given  Mrs.  Fiske's  career  its  character.  The 
Fiske  productions  make  a  notable  list  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  American  stage,  but  I  like  to  believe 
it  was  less  the  result  of  a  self-conscious,  high- 
minded  purpose  to  bestow  good  things  on  the 
American  public  than  of  a  succession  of  com- 
pelling and  disinterested  enthusiasms  for  the 
good  plays  as  they  came  along.  I  am  sure  that 
on  the  several  occasions  when  Mrs.  Fiske  ac- 
cepted comparatively  unimportant  roles  in  her 
186 


EOSTSCRIPT 

own  productions,  it  was  not  in  any  showy  mood 
of  self-effacement,  but  because  of  her  absorp- 
tion in  the  play  itself;  because  she  really  cared 
about  nothing  except  the  immediate  objectinca- 
tion  of  a  play  she  happened  to  admire.  She 
would  care  a  great  deal  about  that,  and  not 
much  about  its  effect  on  her  personal  fame  and 
fortune.  Therefore  when  she  told  me  that  she 
would  guard  her  health  by  playing  only  light 
comedies  for  the  rest  of  her  days,  I  was  not  at 
all  impressed.  If  a  racking  tragedy  happened 
to  intrigue  her  to-morrow,  I  think  she  would 
plunge  into  rehearsals  before  the  day  was  done. 

The  most  familiar  answer  to  Mrs.  Fiske's 
contentions  as  to  repertory  is  the  defense  of  such 
a  theater  as  a  place  of  experiments,  a  labora- 
tory for  plays.  The  most  familiar  example 
cited  is  the  Irish  Players  and  their  "Playboy  of 
the  Western  World."  Where  would  the 
"Playboy"  have  been  had  it  not  been  for  the 
repertory  idea"?  To  which,  I  feel  sure,  Mrs. 
Fiske  would  make  unabashed  answer  somewhat 
as  follows: 

"Where  is  it  now*?  Where  was  it  ever*? 
What  has  become  of  it"?  Why  did  it  not  run 
for  half  a  season  in  New  York?  After  all,  we 

187 


MRS.  FISKE 

are  not  so  very  rich  in  great  plays.  Why  had 
it  only  spasmodic  and  more  or  less  disorderly 
production?  Why  has  not  the  great  theater- 
going public  of  America  seen  it  for  that  pub- 
lic's own  welfare*?  The  'Playboy'  has  been 
lost  because — is  it  not  true? — it  was  so  unfor- 
tunate as  to  have  been  born  and  caught  in  a 
'movement' — a  repertory  movement;  one  of 
the  finest  and  most  idealistic,  too.  So  'The 
Playboy*  has  been  lost  to  the  public  of  this 
generation  unless  some  first-rate  specialist  will 
catch  it  up  and  give  it  a  straight-f  rom-the-shoul- 
der  professional  presentation.  Of  course  it  is 
shameful  that  a  specialist  did  not  do  this  in 
the  first  place." 

The  best  answer,  however,  to  Mrs.  Fiske's 
contentions  as  to  repertory  is  to  be  found,  I 
think,  in  her  own  testimony  as  to  the  difficulty, 
the  tremendous  difficulty,  of  assembling  the 
ideal  cast,  search  where  you  may  and  spend 
what  you  will.  It  is  her  point  that  no  one 
company,  however  resourceful,  can  be  adjusted 
to  a  series  of  plays  as  satisfactorily  as  the  sep- 
arate companies  a  director  might  assemble  for 
each  separate  play.  Yet  the  finding  of  the 
ideally  appropriate  company  is  no  easy  task. 
188 


POSTSCRIPT 

Only  once  in  twenty  years  did  the  Fiskes  ac- 
complish it  to  her  satisfaction.  She  describes, 
for  instance,  the  perfect  cast  she  contemplated 
for  "Rosmersholm"  and  how  it  escaped  her. 
For  it  is  one  thing  to  select  the  perfect  cast,  and 
quite  another  to  assemble  it  when  a  hundred 
other  inclinations  and  a  dozen  other  contracts 
are  working  against  the  idealistic,  but  baffled, 
director.  "A  perfectly  adequate  and  success- 
ful stage  representation  of  a  play,"  says  Ber- 
nard Shaw,  "requires  a  combination  of  circum- 
stances so  fortunate  that  I  doubt  whether  it 
has  ever  occurred  in  the  history  of  the  world." 
That  is  why  Mr.  Shaw  insists  on  publishing  and 
acting  (within  the  brackets)  his  own  pieces,  and 
that  is  why  I  am  not  at  all  sure  a  well-rounded, 
flexible  company  would  not  fit  any  play  as 
well  as  the  special  company  its  producer  might 
be  able  to  gather  together  at  any  one  time  in  the 
scramble  and  hubbub  of  the  Rialto. 

Furthermore,  I  believe  that  such  a  fixed  com- 
pany, continuing  from  season  to  season,  is  neces- 
sary in  order  to  give  a  national  theater  con- 
tinuity in  the  public  mind.  Without  the  mag- 
net of  some  such  favorite  and  familiar  person- 
ality, I  think  another  "Rosmersholm,"  though 
189 


MRS.  FISKE 

superbly  played,  would  not  draw  the  crowds  to 
the  theater.  In  1907  and  1908  "Rosmers- 
holm"  did  move  in  majestic  triumph  across  this 
country;  but  I  do  not  think  the  people  went  to 
see  "Rosmersholm."  I  think  they  went  to  see 
Mrs.  Fiske. 

And  speaking  of  "Rosmersholm,"  let  me 
smuggle  in  here  this  letter,  which  touches  on 
her  great  adventure  with  that  tragedy.  Mrs. 
Fiske  writes  to  me : 

I  wish  I  had  realized  during  some  one  of  our  many 
idle  and  pleasant  conversations  how  fully  your  alarm- 
ingly long  memory  would  reconstruct  them  for  the 
series  you  have  been  giving  forth  in  The  Century. 
Then  in  a  guilefully  casual  and  studied  manner  I 
might  have  let  fall  a  few  of  the  observations  I  should 
really  enjoy  making,  a  few  of  the  things  on  which  I 
should  like  to  free  my  mind. 

I  wish  I  had  taken  a  little  fling  at  the  reckless  writ- 
ing that  occasionally  makes  the  way  harder  and  more 
discouraging  for  those  who  want  to  do  the  good  things 
in  the  theater.  Let  me  give  you  a  sample  from  a 
current  magazine,  not  because  it  is  particularly  Im- 
portant, but  because  it  happens  to  be  at  hand.  Some 
one,  apropos  of  America's  inhospitality  to  the  loftier 
literature  of  the  theater,  has  just  said  I  piled  up 
heavy  losses  for  my  manager  with  my  "tragedies  of 
'Hannele'  and  of  'Rosmersholm,'  whose  lovers  threw 
themselves  into  the  mill-race  and  committed  mill-race- 

190 


Mrs.  Fiske  as  Hannele 


POSTSCRIPT 

suicide."  What  else,  he  asks,  could  have  happened 
where  the  national  idol  was  to  be  Charlie  Chaplin  ? 

Now  this,  as  you  know,  is  downright  false  and  it  is 
wickedly  unfair,  or,  rather,  this  sort  of  thing  is  wick- 
edly unfair  to  Ibsen  and  Hauptmann  and  America  and 
me.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  half  a  season  "Rosmers- 
holm"  made  a  pleasant  profit  of  forty  thousand  dol- 
lars. If  any  one  at  this  late  date  is  to  make  casual 
reference  to  "Rosmersholm,"  I  think  it  would  be  just 
as  well  to  say  the  significant  thing,  and  the  significant 
thing  about  "Rosmersholm"  is  that  in  the  United 
States  alone  of  all  countries,  in  this  baby-land  of  the 
Western  world,  that  most  somber  tragedy  of  our  time 
achieved  a  run  of  nearly  two  hundred  consecutive 
performances  at  a  profit.  How  wonderful!  No- 
where else  has  it  happened. 

As  to  "Hannele,"  it  was  given  for  only  a  few  per- 
formances in  New  York  and  Chicago,  but  that  was 
all  that  was  ever  intended.  It  was  purely  a  labor  of 
love.  We  never  dreamed  of  such  an  absurd  project 
as  playing  a  long  season  with  anything  so  arduous,  so 
hazardous,  and  so  fearfully  expensive.  It  calls  for  a 
chorus  of  Heaven  knows  how  many  and  for  a  formid- 
able orchestra,  parts  of  the  production  that  could  not 
possibly  be  found  outside  the  biggest  cities.  "Han- 
nele" was  not  satisfying,  not  right,  at  the  Lyceum  in 
New  York,  too  small  a  theater  for  its  essential  illu- 
sions. We  had  no  sooner  tried  it  there  than  we  real- 
ized that  we  had  been  wrong  in  declining  the  invitation 
to  present  it  at  the  New  Theater ;  and  after  ten  days, 
instead  of  the  two  weeks  contemplated,  we  resumed 
"The  Pillars  of  Society,"  a  popular  success,  which 

193 


MRS.  FISKE 

was  the  regular  bill  of  the  season,  whereas  "Hannele," 
of  course,  was  just  a  little  something  on  the  side  with 
which  we  were  indulging  its  friends  and  ourselves. 

Its  great  beauty,  which  was  only  partly  revealed  at 
the  Lyceum  and  which,  nevertheless,  won  great  praise 
from  high  places,  was  completely  manifest  at  the 
spacious  Grand  Opera  House  in  Chicago,  where  we 
were  able  to  secure  parts  of  the  fine  Thomas  orchestra 
for  the  lovely  music.  We  gave  it  for  three  or  four 
special  matinees,  and  it  was  superb.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  I  think  it  about  paid  for  itself ;  but  even  if  it  did 
not,  the  distinction  it  gave  the  entire  engagement — 
the  swell  of  the  wake  of  it — was  of  incalculable  value 
to  us  at  the  time  and  long  afterward,  lifting  us  all  to 
a  higher  level.  Though  "Hannele"  never  made 
money,  and  was  not  expected  to,  I  think  it  was  prob- 
ably one  of  the  wisest  enterprises  Mr.  Fiske  and  I  ever 
undertook.  It  had  a  great  and  measurable  value,  as 
any  one  could  have  seen  who  had  that  mysterious  and 
delicate  something  which,  for  lack  of  a  clearer  phrase, 
I  must  call  the  sense  of  the  theater. 

You  must  have  this  sense  inborn  and  carefully  de- 
veloped if  you  would  do  in  the  theater  the  less  obvi- 
ous and  more  difficult  tasks  such  as  "Rosmersholm" 
and  "Hannele."  Only  so  can  you  stand  alone,  and 
you  must  stand  alone.  You  must  make  your  own 
blunders,  must  cheerfully  accept  your  own  mistakes 
as  part  of  the  scheme  of  things.  You  must  not  allow 
yourself  to  be  advised,  cautioned,  influenced,  persuaded 
this  way  and  that.  If  Mr.  Fiske  and  I  had  listened  to 
the  kind  and  earnest  advice  of  those  who  had  our  best 
interests  at  heart,  we  would  have  thrown  away  a  won- 

194 


POSTSCRIPT 

derful  dramatic  property — none  other  than  "Becky 
Sharp."  Like  many  another  play  that  has  thrived 
enormously,  "Becky,"  in  its  first  stages,  was  a  gigantic 
failure.  We  were  begged  to  withdraw  it.  The 
trouble,  every  one  said,  was  with  the  play  and  with 
my  acting.  The  trouble  was  not  with  the  play.  So 
far  as  I  remember,  not  a  line  of  it  was  ever  changed 
after  the  opening  night  at  the  old  Fifth  Avenue. 
The  trouble  was  with  me.  The  trouble  was  with 
my  individual  performance,  and  I  knew  that  immedi- 
ately. A  great  curiosity,  an  intense  and  satisfying  in- 
terest in  Thackeray,  drew  crowds  to  the  play  from 
the  first,  but  they  dispersed  gloomy,  dissatisfied,  omin- 
ous. By  the  second  week  the  crowds  were  even  larger, 
but  by  this  time  they  were  happy  crowds.  I  tell  you 
this  little  bit  of  history  because  it  illustrates  the  fact 
that  the  producer  must  be  able  to  detect  real  failure 
from  the  beginning.  Except  in  one  instance,  Mr. 
Fiske  and  I  have  recognized  our  real  failures  imme- 
diately and  made  short  work  of  them. 

One  beautiful  thing  we  did  throw  away.  This 
was  "Lady  Betty  Martingale"  by  John  Luther  Long. 
It  had  great  faults,  but  they  were  the  kind  you  could 
remedy  in  two  days.  Properly  nursed,  the  play  would 
have  developed  the  priceless  quality  of  delicate  charm, 
and  I  think  I  owe  it  to  Mr.  Long  to  shout  this  from 
the  housetops.  All  the  long  faces  that  hover  close 
when  success  does  not  immediately  perch  upon  one's 
banner  gathered  about  "Lady  Betty  Martingale." 
All  those  who  could  not  see,  who  could  not  instantly 
and  instinctively  reach  the  psychological  root  of  the 
trouble,  closed  in  upon  the  play  and  a  beautiful  thing 

195 


MRS.  FISKE 

was  crushed  to  death  and  lost  to  the  American 
theater.  If  you  have  a  sense  of  the  theater^  you  can 
rely  on  that  to  tell  you,  and  with  that  reliance  wave 
aside  the  kindly  disposed  grave-diggers  who  again 
and  again  will  assemble  beside  your  dearest  efforts. 
Among  the  most  disheartening  and  dangerous  of 
these  advisers,  you  will  often  find  those  closest  to  you, 
your  dearest  friends,  members  of  your  own  family, 
perhaps,  loving,  anxious,  and  knowing  nothing  what- 
ever about  the  theater.  A  beloved  aunt  implored  me 
not  to  produce  "Tess  of  the  d'Urbervilles,"  and  I  was 
so  young  at  the  time,  so  far  from  learning  the  bitter 
lesson  of  making  my  own  decisions  and  obeying  my 
own  instinct,  that  I  almost  yielded  to  her  prayers. 
Yet  "Tess"  has  been  the  sturdy  foundation  of  all  that 
followed,  good  and  bad.  There  comes  to  mind  as  I 
write  you  a  precious  bit  of  advice  I  received  the  other 
day  during  a  visit  to  my  dressing-room  by  a  dear 
friend  who  was  all  aglow  with  the  enthusiasm  of  a 
pleasant  and  inspiring  matinee.  "Oh,  why,"  she  ex- 
claimed, " — why  do  you  not  always  play  comedy !"  I 
do  not  know  exactly  what  she  meant.  They  are  dif- 
ficult to  follow,  these  people.  Their  mental  processes, 
as  far  as  the  theater  is  concerned,  are  unfathomable  to 
us  of  the  theater.  I  might  have  answered  that,  much 
as  I  prefer  to  play  comedy,  I  could  not  afford  to  play  it 
all  the  time  for  the  simple  reason  that  our  serious 
dramas  have,  with  two  exceptions,  always  yielded  the 
greater  reward  in  money.  I  might  have  told  her  this, 
but  I  said  nothing,  and  it  is  better  to  say  nothing. 
Keep  your  own  counsel.  Stand  alone.  Pay  no  atten- 
tion to  those  who  have  not  the  sense  of  the  theater. 
196 


POSTSCRIPT 

You  will  not  succeed  always.  That  would  be  ab- 
surd, anyway — absurd  and  stagnating.  But  if  you  do 
not  strike  immediately  the  flame  that  rises  to  the  sky, 
beware  your  nearest  and  dearest  with  their  forebodings 
— their  dire  forebodings.  It  is  perhaps  the  most  tedi- 
ous and  boresome  part  of  a  stage  career,  probably  of 
all  careers.  I  have  never  forgotten  a  visit  to  my 
dressing-room  of  one  closely  related  to  me.  We  were 
engaged  in  giving  birth  to  a  play.  The  process  was 
disagreeable  in  the  extreme.  It  would  be  difficult  to 
imagine  anything  more  outwardly  hopeless  to  one  with- 
out the  sense  of  the  theater.  In  this  case,  however,  I 
was  quite  imperturbable,  because  I  knew  it  was  all 
right.  It  was  quite  possible  to  go  out  and  take  a  walk 
and  think  of  other  things.  But  my  near  one  asked 
with  a  wrinkled  brow:  "Do  you  like  this  play?"  I 
replied,  "I  do  not  like  any  play  we  produce,  ever,  at 
any  time."  The  only  possible  answer,  was  it  not? 
People  without  the  sense  of  the  theater  cannot  talk 
about  it  with  sanity.  I  could  not  possibly  talk  of 
painting  with  an  atom  of  intelligence,  and  yet  how 
blithely  people  do  talk  of  the  theater,  and  with  what 
authority ! 

And  then  the  managers!  For  my  own  part,  man- 
agers have  been  few,  and  my  way  has  been  so  strewn 
with  roses  in  that  respect  that  I  cannot  speak  from  per- 
sonal experience;  but  my  long  life  in  the  theater  has 
taught  me  this  prayer:  "Deliver  me  from  the  small- 
visioned  lords  of  the  theater  who  can  be  depressed 
when  the  audience  is  scanty  or  frigid,  and  who  the 
very  next  night  will  glow  and  exult  in  the  joy  of  a 
packed  and  enthusiastic  house!"  Such  managers  are 
197 


MRS.  FISKE 

dangerous  to  a  career.  They  forget  that  the  perform- 
ance may  be  exactly  the  same.  They  are  not  relying 
on  their  own  sense  of  failure  and  success.  Probably 
they  have  none.  They  are  not  truly  of  the  theater. 
Let  them  be  gone  from  it !  Away  with  them ! 

The  great,  substantial,  foundation-making  careers  of 
the  stage,  the  men  and  women  who  have  kept  the  in- 
stitution animate  as  an  integral  part  of  the  life  of  the 
people,  have  been  the  men  and  women  who  stood  firm 
at  their  several  posts  in  that  part  of  the  world's  do- 
main which  is  called  the  theater.  Theirs  is  the  power 
and  the  glory  for  ever  and  ever. 

I  wish  I  had  told  you  all  this,  and  I  wish,  too,  that 
I  had  paid  a  little  tribute  to  the  dramatic  critics  of 
America.  There  has  ever  been  a  sort  of  comradeship 
between  us,  unexpressed,  but  felt,  over  a  long  stretch 
of  years.  From  girlhood  I  have  taken  them  for  what 
they  were  worth,  hail  fellow  well  met,  even  when  we 
never  met  at  all,  and  they  have  taken  me  in  the  same 
way.  Their  rebukes  have  never  made  me  angry,  be- 
cause I  have  always  wondered  why  they  did  not  rebuke 
me  more.  They  should  have.  Their  friendly  praise 
has  been  one  of  the  sweetest,  most  warming  things  in 
my  life  in  the  theater.  I  do  go  on  the  stage  unafraid 
of  them  and  with  love  in  my  heart  for  them.  And, 
the  country  over,  I  think  most  of  them  have  a  stealthy 
fondness  for  me.  Indeed,  they  show  it  all  the  time. 

Thus  Mrs.  Fiske. 


198 


VII 

MARIE  AUGUSTA  DAVEY 

IN  this  final  chapter  I  submit  the  outline  of  a 
long  and  extraordinarily  productive  career 
and  some  remote  material  assembled  for  the 
guidance  and  convenience  of  the  bold  fellow 
who  may  some  day  undertake  "The  Life  and 
Works  of  Minnie  Maddern  Fiske."  It  is  pos- 
sible that  some  day  she  herself,  in  the  compara- 
tive leisure  of  the  retirement  she  contemplates, 
will  turn  her  attention  to  a  volume  of  reminis- 
cence. But  I  have  my  doubts.  It  would  be  a 
fascinating  thing  to  read,  but  it  will  be  hard  for 
any  publisher  to  persuade  her  that  many  people 
would  be  interested  in  a  story  that  does  not 
even  interest  her  particularly.  I  may  add  in 
an  aggrieved  tone  that  the  data  here  presented 
I  have  gathered  without  any  assistance  from 
Mrs.  Fiske. 

Mrs.    Fiske's   life   in   the   theater  may   be 
roughly  divided  into  four  periods :  her  years  as 
199 


MRS.  FISKE 

an  "infant  phenomenon";  her  dashing  days  as 
a  second  and  lesser  Lotta;  her  reappearance  as 
Mrs.  Fiske,  followed  by  the  richly  eventful  sea- 
sons of  the  Manhattan  Company;  and,  finally, 
the  present  period,  which  includes  such  idler 
comedies  as  "Mrs  Bumpstead-Leigh"  and  "Erst- 
while Susan,"  the  vastly  diverting  character- 
ization in  which,  as  I  write,  she  is  just  bringing 
her  second  season  to  a  close. 

Marie  Augusta  Davey — for  so  Mrs.  Fiske 
was  named  on  her  first  appearance  in  this  world 
— was  born  in  New  Orleans  on  December  19, 
1865.  Her  father  and  mother  were  both  of  the 
theater.  They  were  "show-folks."  Tom 
Davey,  whose  Welsh  forebears  contributed  to 
the  Celtic  strain  in  Mrs.  Fiske  which  no  one 
can  miss,  was  an  actor  and  theatrical  manager 
in  the  more  primitive  and  more  adventurous 
days  of  the  American  stage.  Lizzie  Maddern, 
musician  and  actress,  was  one  of  the  three  Mad- 
dern sisters  who  came  here  from  England  on 
their  father's  concert  tours.  Of  these  sisters, 
Mary  Maddern  acted  with  Mrs.  Fiske  until 
recently;  while  Emma  Maddern,  also  an  act- 
ress in  many  of  Davey's  ventures,  became  Mrs. 
Stevens,  and  it  is  her  brilliant  daughter,  Emily 
200 


MARIE  AUGUSTA  DAVEY 

Stevens,  whose  continuation  of  the  Maddern 
look  and  voice  and  manner  inspires  to  this  day 
the  frequent  and  probably  infuriating  sugges- 
tion that  she  imitates  her  distinguished  cousin. 
So  Mrs.  Fiske  was  a  born  actress  in  more 
senses  than  one.  She  came  of  a  stage  family 
as  unmistakably  as  did  the  Barrymores,  the 
Terrys,  or,  for  that  matter,  the  Crummleses. 
That  would  seem  to  be  the  best  way  to  go  about 
the  business.  A  thoughtful  study  of  the  lives 
of  the  players  must  lead  us  all  to  advise  stage 
aspirants  to  have  for  a  grandmother  a  distin- 
guished actress  and  at  least  one  aunt  and  an 
uncle  or  two  dedicated  to  the  theater.  It  is 
customary  to  speak  of  Mrs.  Fiske's  first  appear- 
ance as  having  taken  place  at  Little  Rock  as 
the  Duke  of  Tork  in  "Richard  III,"  but  that 
was  probably  merely  her  first  considerable  role. 
Just  as  Maude  Adams  began  her  career  at  the 
age  of  nn.e  months  when  she  was  carried  on,  out 
in  Salt  Lake  City,  on  a  platter,  so,  in  the  thea- 
ters down  the  Mississippi,  Mrs.  Fiske  must  have 
had  such  easy  roles  as  could  be  filled  by  any 
actress  who  was  "the  type."  It  would  be  safest 
to  say  that  she  wandered  on  the  stage,  a  walking 
lady  who  appeared  before  the  footlights  as  soon 

201 


MRS.  FISKE 

as  she  could  walk,  and  was  intrusted  with  speak- 
ing parts  as  soon  as  she  could  talk. 

Minnie  Maddern  had  long  since  put  the 
nursery  behind  her  when  at  the  age  of  four  she 
made  her  debut  in  New  York.  If  you  will 
turn  to  the  newspapers  of  May  30,  1870,  you 
will  find  in  the  advertisement  of  the  old  Thea- 
tre Frangais  in  Fourteenth  Street  the  notice  of 
"A  Sheep  in  Wolf's  Clothing,"  with  Carlotta 
Leclercq,  and  the  announcement  in  capitals — 
in  prophetic  capitals — that  that  evening  would 
introduce  "LITTLE  MINNIE  MADDERN,  HER 

FIRST      APPEARANCE      ON      ANY      STAGE."       Of 

course  it  was  nothing  of  the  sort,  but  then  this 
was  a  theatrical  advertisement.  Just  as  the 
photographs  of  the  alert  and  perky  Minnie 
Maddern  of  those  days  look  preposterously  like 
the  Mrs.  Fiske  of  to-day,  so  the  reviews  in  the 
papers  the  next  day  suggest  that  something  of 
the  same  style  and  quality  manifested  itself 
even  then. 

"Prodigies  are  not  apt  to  be  objects  of  pleas- 
ing contemplation  to  a  healthy  mind,"  The 
World  observed,  "but  this  Miss  Minnie  Mad- 
dern is  made  a  prodigy  by  the  absence  of  any- 
thing prodigious  about  her  performance,  and 

202 


MARIE  AUGUSTA  DAVEY 

her  acting  is  entirely  unexceptionable."  The 
Times,  which  began  to  be  rapturous  about  Mrs. 
Fiske  when  she  was  four,  described  her  as  "the 
first  infant  actress  we  remember  whose  efforts 
do  not  relish  of  the  familiar  mechanism  of  word 
and  manner."  "Her  knowledge  of  stage  busi- 
ness, her  general  carriage  and  the  careful  deliv- 
ery of  her  lines  throughout  the  play,  were  re- 
markable for  a  child  of  her  years,"  Laurence 
Hutton  wrote  afterwards,  "and  hers  was  one  of 
the  most  satisfactory  representations  in  the 
piece." 

Far  more  glowing  were  the  accounts  which 
followed  her  next  important  role  in  New  York 
when,  some  four  years  later,  Minnie  Maddern 
was  cast  as  Prince  Arthur  in  a  distinguished  re- 
vival of  "King  John"  at  Booth's  Theater. 
Agnes  Booth,  who  was  the  Queen  Constance 
of  that  production,  used  to  stand  in  the  wings 
and  listen  to  the  grief-charged  voice  of  an  eight- 
year-old  girl,  so  that  from  it  she  might  take  the 
key  and  the  tone  for  her  own  scenes  to  come. 

During  this  period  Minnie  Maddern,  as  she 

was  called  on  all  the  programs  from  the  first, 

played  with  many  notables  of  the  stage.     So 

she  sat  on  Jefferson's  knee  as  Meenie,  or,  as 

203 


MRS.  FISKE 

Hendrick,  laboriously  spelled  out  the  sinister 
deed  of  Derrick  for  the  enlightenment  of  the 
befuddled  Rip.  So  she  basked  in  the  radiance 
of  Mary  Anderson,  and  steadied  herself  amid 
the  thunder  of  John  McCullough,  and  dropped 
off  to  sleep  to  the  crooning  music  of  J.  K. 
Emmet.  Here  is  a  fairly  complete  list  of  the 
parts  that  fell  to  her : 

Duke  of  York  in  "Richard  III." 

Willie  Lee  in  "Hunted  Down." 

Prince  Arthur  in  "King  John." 

The  crowned  child  in  "Macbeth." 

Damon's  son  in  "Damon  and  Pythias." 

Little  Fritz  in  "Fritz,  Our  German  Cousin." 

Paul  in  "The  Octoroon." 

Franko  in  "Guy  Mannering." 

Sybil  in  "A  Sheep  in  Wolf's  Clothing." 

Mary  Morgan  in  "Ten  Nights  in  a  Barroom." 

The  child  in  "Across  the  Continent." 

The  boy  in  "Bosom  Friends." 

Alfred  in  "Divorce." 

Lucy  Fairweather  in  "The  Streets  of  New  York." 

The  gamin  and  Peachblossom  in  "Under  the  Gas- 

light."  ^ 

Marjorie  in  "The  Rough  Diamond." 
The  Child  in  "The  Little  Rebel." 
Adrienne  in  "Monsieur  Alphonse." 
Georgie  in  "Frou-frou.5* 
Hendrick  and  Meenie  in  "Rip  Van  Winkle." 

204 


Mrs.  Fiske  at  four,  a  year  after  her  debut 
on  the  stage 


Eva  in  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin." 

Dollie  in  "Chicago  Before  the  Fire." 

Hilda  in  "Karl  and  Hilda." 

Ralph  Rackstraw  in  "Pinafore." 

Clip  in  "A  Messenger  from  Jarvis  Section." 

The  Sun  God  in  "The  Ice  Witch." 

Francois  in  "Richelieu." 

Louise  in  "The  Two  Orphans." 

The  Widow  Melnotte  in  "The  Lady  of  Lyons." 

To  say  nothing  of  miscellaneous  children  and 
fairies  in  "Aladdin,"  "The  White  Fawn"  and 
other  spectacular  pieces.  In  looking  over  this 
formidable  list,  you  may  be  struck  by  the  great 
variety  of  the  parts,  and  it  is  an  extraordinary 
thing  that  Minnie  Maddern,  who  was  an  ab- 
surdly tiny  morsel  of  an  actress,  should  ever 
have  had  the  opportunity  to  play  the  grown-up 
parts.  Yet  such  was  the  economy  of  those 
makeshift  days  that  she  can  remember  going  on 
as  the  Widow  Melnotte  when  she  was  twelve, 
and  taking  to  romances  when  she  was  thirteen 
and  fourteen.  When  she  was  thirteen  she  was 
touring  alone,  an  unabashed  free-lance  in  the 
catch-as-catch-can,  barn-storming  theater  of  a 
day  gone  by. 

It  should  be  remembered,  too,  that  the  long 
run,  as  we  know  it,  had  not  yet  come  into  exist- 
207 


MRS.  FISKE 

ence,  and  that  many  of  the  roles  she  assumed 
were  for  a  few  weeks,  a  week,  sometimes  only 
for  a  night.  For  example,  the  Daveys  might 
be  quartered  for  a  season  in  some  Ohio  city, 
where  their  daughter  would  go  to  the  convent 
school  just  like  the  child  across  the  street  except 
for  the  occasions  when  some  visiting  star  wo  .Id 
need  a  child  for  some  piece  in  his  repertory. 
Obviously  her  schooling  must  have  been  fugitive 
and  lacking  that  fine,  serene  continuity  on  which 
educators  set  such  store ;  so  it  is  quite  the  thing 
for  commentators  on  Mrs.  Fiske  to  roll  their 
eyes  and  speak  wonderingly  of  the  qualities  of 
mind  and  taste  her  works  have  borne  witness  to 
and  her  whole  being  revealed.  Yet  it  is  not 
apparent  that  the  kind  of  childhood  she  knew 
is  not  quite  as  stimulating  as  the  more  conven- 
tional routine  of  learning  that  two  and  two 
make  four  and  memorizing  the  exports,  mineral 
resources,  manners,  and  customs  of  Bolivia. 
Certainly  those  who  enter  the  theater  early  are 
likely  in  maturity  to  be  the  least  stagy.  To 
them  it  has  never  been  a  glamorous  adventure. 
To  them  it  is  as  natural  as  life  itself,  as  much  a 
matter  of  course  as  the  air  we  all  breathe,  as 
little  subject  for  corrupting  thought  as  the  blue 
208 


MARIE  AUGUSTA  DAVEY 

sky  we  all  take  for  granted.     And  they  are  the 
aristocrats  of  the  theater. 

With  the  production  of  "Fogg's  Ferry"  at 
Abbey's  Park  Theater  on  May  15,  1882,  we 
enter  upon  the  second  period  of  Mrs.  Fiske's 
career,  when  she  put  away  childish  roles  and 
went  in  for  rough  comedy  and  romances.  It 
was  her  debut  as  a  star  in  New  York,  and  she 
was  just  sixteen.  Turn  once  more  to  the  yel- 
lowing newspapers,  and  in  the  New  York  jour- 
nals of  that  date  you  will  see  an  advertisement 
such  as  this : 


FIRST  APPEARANCE  OF  THE  CHARMING  YOUNG 
COMEDIENNE 

MISS       MINNIE       MADDERN 

as  Chip  in 
"FOGG'S  FERRY" 

Charles  E.  Callahan's  romantic  comedy-drama 

of  human  love  and  passion. 

Illustrated  by  a  strong  company  with 

picturesque  scenery  and  magnificent 

effects. 


The  next  reviews  were  full  of  nice  things 
about  the  new  star,  but  the  play  received  short 
209 


MRS.  FISKE 

shrift.  It  is  amusing  to  think  that  the  great 
actress  of  Ibsen  roles  and  the  unequaled  expon- 
ent of  such  high  comedy  as  "Becky  Sharp"  and 
"The  New  York  Idea"  should  have  had  to  start 
forth  under  the  handicap  of  having  the  Even- 
ing Post  laud  her  "winning,  childlike,  innocent 
manner"  and  commend  her  for  being  "frolic- 
some and  vivacious  without  being  vulgar."  It 
is  only  with  a  struggle  that  you  can  realize  it 
was  of  our  Mrs.  Fiske  The  Sun  was  speaking 
when  it  gave  this  account  of  the  premiere  of 
"Fogg's  Ferry" : 

There  has  been  a  good  deal  of  indiscreet  and  reck- 
less writing  put  forth  about  Minnie  Maddern  and 
her  dramatic  gifts,  but  she  triumphed  bravely  last 
evening  over  pamphlets,  paragraphs,  bouquets,  and 
friends,  and  won  the  genuine  good  will  of  her  audience. 
She  came  forward  like  a  new  Lotta,  young,  slender, 
sprightly,  quite  pretty,  arch  of  manner,  rash  in  the 
matter  of  her  stockings,  as  Lotta  always  was,  and  pos- 
sessed of  undeniable  red  hair.  She  had  not  been  on 
the  stage  a  minute  before  she  had  jumped  under  most 
perilous  conditions  to  a  seat  on  the  edge  of  a  table  and 
established  with  the  audience  relations  of  the  most 
agreeable  intimacy.  Her  self-possession  is  complete. 
She  can  sing  even  worse  than  Lotta  can ;  but  she  has  a 
native  gift  and  disposition  to  her  calling  that  will  not 
be  denied  expression  and  which,  if  afforded  any  occa- 

210 


Minnie  Maddern  at  sixteen 


MARIE  AUGUSTA  DAVEY 

sion  of  growth  and  development,  cannot  fail  to  make 
her  a  thoroughly  popular  artist  in  her  line  of  small 
comedy.  She  made  a  better  impression  than  has  been 
made  by  any  debutante  in  years,  in  spite  of  unusual 
difficulties  that  she  had  to  encounter. 

Indeed,  the  contrast  between  this  beginning 
and  what  followed  in  later  years  is  so  diverting 
that  there  must  be  room  found  here  for  some 
account  of  "Fogg's  Ferry."  You  can  obtain  a 
faint  impression  of  its  quality  from  this  resume, 
which  appeared  in  The  Herald: 

It  opens  delightfully  with  a  view  of  Western  domes- 
tic felicity  in  the  picture  of  the  home  of  Fogg,  the 
ferryman,  in  which  most  of  the  family  are  drunk  or 
gradually  getting  drunk  on  the  private  stock  of  a  vis- 
itor to  the  family,  Bruce  Rawdon,  the  villain  of  the 
piece,  who  has  come  to  court  Chip,  the  ferryman's 
daughter.  It  may  be  incidentally  remarked  that  the 
ferry  business  must  be  exceedingly  unremunerative  in 
that  part  of  the  country  for  in  a  landscape  stretching 
off  apparently  hundreds  of  miles,  the  artist  has  not 
provided  a  sign  of  the  presence  of  man,  woman,  child 
or  beast  or  a  place  of  habitation  on  mountain  or  in 
valley.  Gerald  White,  the  goody-goody  man  of  the 
play,  also  turns  up  in  the  vast  wilderness  with  matri- 
monial intentions  toward  Chip,  who  is  dressed  so  as  to 
appear  to  be  about  ten  or  twelve  years  old.  The  sense 
of  propriety  in  the  audience  is  satisfied,  however,  by 
Chip  stating  that  she  is  sixteen  years  old,  although  she 
213 


MRS.  FISKE 

wears  her  dresses  cut  to  her  knee.  The  two  men  have 
at  each  other  and  Chip  prevents  a  murder,  and  then, 
after  mild  courtship  on  the  part  of  all  three,  Chip  an- 
nounces that  she  has  curious  dreams,  not  traceable  to 
indigestion,  which  give  her  an  idea  she  was  as  an  in- 
fant changed  in  her  cradle.  She  "feels  she  is  a  lady" 
and  asks  the  gentlemen  if  they  don't  feel  she  is  right? 
There  being  no  opposition,  the  question  is  declared 
carried  unanimously  and  the  curtain  goes  down.  In 
act  second  Chip  is  found  at  Judge  Somebody's  house, 
where  she  is  governess  or  maid  or  something  else  un- 
explained. The  two  men  are  there  ah-o,  still  matri- 
monially inclined,  but  one  of  them  is  wooing  Blanche, 
the  proud  and  haughty  daughter  of  the  Judge.  Here 
it  is  clear  to  the  audience  that  Blanche  was  the  other 
baby  with  whom  Chip  was  mixed  up:  but  none  but 
the  audience  know  it.  Some  private  papers  in  the 
Judge's  safe  are  sought  by  the  villain  of  the  piece,  who 
wants  to  get  them  and  then  marry  Blanche,  and  Chip  is 
accused  of  the  theft  and  dismissed  the  house.  In  act 
third  the  two  men  turn  up,  again  still  matrimonially 
inclined,  and  the  villain  proposes  to  get  more  of  the 
Judge's  papers  by  blowing  up  a  steamer  about  to  pass, 
and  on  which  the  Judge  is  traveling  with  a  load  of 
bonds  and  wills  and  other  family  valuables.  Chip 
overhears  it  all  and  saves  the  steamer  by  firing  a  pocket 
pistol  into  the  waters  and  exploding  a  dynamite  mine 
securely  hidden  on  the  bed  of  the  river  by  piercing  the 
iron  cylinder  with  the  ball.  After  this  impossible  ex- 
ploit, the  play  very  properly  begins  its  natural  dis- 
solution. In  act  four  we  find  Chip  in  the  Judge's 
home  in  an  elaborate  costume  of  embroidered  satin  and 

214 


MARIE  AUGUSTA  DAVEY 

silk  cut  in  the  latest  Paris  fashion;  we  find  her  the 
acknowledged  daughter,  while  the  proud  and 
haughty  Blanche  is  dismissed  the  house ;  Chip  marries 
the  man  of  her  choice  and  villainy  generally  being  pun- 
ished and  virtue  rewarded,  the  curtain  falls.  Then 
everybody  got  up  and  said  it  was  a  very  much  involved 
and  poor  play  but  that  Miss  Maddern  was  quite  good. 
And  they  were  right. 

I  have  expanded  thus  on  the  sparsely  chron- 
icled periods  of  Mrs.  Fiske's  career  not  from 
any  notion  that  what  she  airily  dismisses  as  her 
"pre-historic"  days  were  comparatively  im- 
portant, but  for  two  other  reasons.  The  detail 
of  her  seasons  as  Minnie  Maddern  is  less  acces- 
sible, less  familiar  to  the  present  generation  of 
theatergoers.  Then,  too,  I  think  it  is  interest- 
ing, suggestive,  and  heartening  that  "Fogg's 
Ferry"  should  have  prepared  for  "Rosmers- 
holm,"  that  out  of  such  rough-and-ready  begin- 
nings her  quality  both  as  an  artist  and  as  a 
commander  of  dramatic  endeavor  should  have 
emerged  in  gradual  beauty  and  significance 
until  she  should  one  day  stand  as  the  loftiest 
artist  on  the  American  stage. 

Even  when  "Fogg's  Ferry"  came  to  town 
some  one  on  The  Tribune,  William  Winter  pre- 
sumably, hailed  her  while  scarcely  more  than  a 
215 


MRS.  FISKE 

child,  "as  one  of  the  brightest  and  most  inter- 
esting girls  that  have  appeared  upon  the  stage," 
but  the  more  truly  prophetic  appreciation  of 
the  Mrs.  Fiske  of  yesterday  and  to-day  began 
to  come  a  few  seasons  later  with  her  appearance 
in  "In  Spite  of  All,"  an  adaptation  Steele 
Mackaye  made  from  the  "Andrea"  of  Sardou 
fits  and  presented  at  his  Lyceum  in  1885.  I 
remember  Mrs.  Fiske's  once  laughing  gaily  at 
her  own  youthful  recklessness  in  connection 
with  "In  Spite  of  All." 

"I  think  the  limit  was  reached,"  she  said, 
"when  I  had  the  impudence  to  stroll  out  and 
engage  a  company  comprising  Eben  Plympton, 
John  Lane  (then  prominent),  Richard  Mans- 
field (who  had  already  had  his  triumph  in  'The 
Parisian  Romance'),  and  Selina  Dolaro  (very 
celebrated  at  that  time).  They  all  'supported' 
me  at  the  old  Lyceum,  and  they  were  superb. 
I  was  perfectly  dreadful,  really.  Mr.  Mans- 
field and  I  got  on  very  well,  although  my 
carelessness  in  dress  annoyed  him  very  much 
and  he  frequently  remonstrated  with  me  in  the 
kindliest  way." 

Yet  it  was  after  "In  Spite  of  All"  that  The 
Times  hailed  Miss  Maddern  as  probably  "the 
216 


o 


O 


MARIE  AUGUSTA  DAVEY 

most  interesting  young  actress  on  the  American 
stage.  She  has  many  artistic  faults,  but,  on 
the  other  hand,  she  has  keen  intelligence,  a 
style,  so  far  as  it  has  been  formulated,  wholly 
her  own,  unlike  that  of  any  other  player  and 
entirely  free  from  conventionality,  and  a  most 
charming  personality,  which  attracts  the  sym- 
pathy and  admiration  of  all  classes  of  play- 
goers." 

"Without  the  endowment  of  beauty,  ungif ted 
by  the  stage  presence  demanded  by  the  popu- 
lace, lacking  breadth  of  figure  and  force  of  per- 
sonality, she  nevertheless  manages,"  The  World 
observed,  "by  the  rarest  of  all  gifts  to  seize, 
by  some  inexplicable  faculty  of  her  own,  upon 
the  sensibility  of  her  auditors  and  to  do  the 
most  marvelously  subtle,  tender  and  pensive 
bits  of  acting  which  it  has  ever  been  our  good 
fortune  to  witness." 

About  this  time  must  have  begun  that  com- 
munity of  enthusiasm  which  has  grown  with 
the  passing  years,  but  which  never  has  em- 
braced and  never  could  embrace  all  the  theater- 
goers of  America.  It  could  never  have  been 
said  of  her,  as  it  has  been  said  of  one  of  her  sis- 
ter stars,  that  she  was  "the  most  valuable  the- 
219 


MRS.  FISKE 

atrical  property  in  America."  You  might  as 
soon  expect  Whistler,  Debussy,  and  Meredith 
to  be  generally  popular  as  to  expect  a  general 
acceptance  of  the  idiom  of  Minnie  Maddern 
Fiske. 

A  comparison  with  such  distinctive  artists  is 
inevitable.  She  is  wont,  in  her  own  casual 
analogies  between  the  art  of  the  actor  and  other 
arts,  to  make  free  use  of  Paderewski,  and  I 
think  most  of  her  admirers  would  see  a  kinship 
between  them.  Certainly  when  they  first 
glimpsed  the  splendors  of  her  art  in  her  later 
years  they  must  have  felt  something  as  the 
Gilders  did  when  they  first  heard  the  great 
pianist.  Richard  Watson  Gilder  wrote  to  his 
wife: 

Paderewski !  Well,  you  have  a  treat  in  store !  He 
is  quite  by  himself — reminding  me  of  no  one  but  the 
young  Swinburne!  His  genius  is  altogether  individ- 
ual, and  if  the  individuality  appeals,  fascinating.  It 
appealed  to  me  immensely.  He  is  not  sublime,  but 
most  intensely  poetic;  his  touch  is  delicacy  itself  in 
the  tender  parts — fairy-like;  almost  sharp,  certainly 
charmingly  crisp  and  at  times,  powerful;  there  is  a 
quiet  alertness,  like  some  queer  new  animal,  sure  of  his 
prey.  The  hit  of  his  playing  was  that  minuet  of  his 

that  Aus  der  Ohe  plays.     He  played  it  very  differently 

r 

220 


MARIE  AUGUSTA  DAVEY 

— in  a  way  to  excite  you  more,  with  his  quick,  strange 
touch  and  tempo,  though 'she  plays  it  exquisitely. 

Indeed,  the  analogy  satisfies  me  so  enor- 
mously that  I  must  clip  still  another  paragraph 
from  a  letter  from  Mrs.  Gilder  to  Mary  Hal- 
lock  Foote.  She  wrote: 

Paderewski  is  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  expe- 
riences in  our  lives.  He  is  not  at  all  like  Rubenstein, 
who  is  like  an  ocean,  and  one  of  the  greatest  of  the 
great,  but  in  his  way  as  intense  an  individuality.  He 
is  a  little  like  Modjeska,  so  noble,  persuasive,  delicate, 
firm;  and  the  most  artistic  creature  imaginable,  all 
nerves  and  sinew,  but  the  body  subordinate  to  the 
spirit — always.  A  wonderful  intelligence  which  some 
artists,  actors  and  especially  musicians  (above  all  vir- 
tuosi) lack. 

In  her  days  as  a  star,  Minnie  Maddern 
played  these  roles: 

Juanita  in  "Juanita,"  by  Charles  Callahan. 
Chip  in  "Fogg's  Ferry,"  by  Charles  Callahan. 
The  leading  role  in  "The  Puritan  Maid,"  by  Ver 

Planck  and  Devereaux. 

The  leading  role  in  "The  Storm  Child." 

The  leading  role  in  "The  Child  Wife." 

The  leading  role  in  "The  Professional  Beauty"  by 

Ver  Planck  and  Devereux. 

The  leading  role  in  "Lady  Jemima." 
Mila  in  "Mila,  Queen  of  the  Natchez." 
221 


MRS.  FISKE 

Mercy  Baxter  in  "Caprice,"  by  Howard  P.  Taylor. 
Alice  Glendinning  in  "In  Spite  of  All,"  adapted  by 
Steel  Mackaye  from  Sardou's  "Andrea." 
Mrs.  Coney  in  "Featherbrain." 

In  1890  she  was  married  to  Harrison  Grey 
Fiske, — it  was  her  second  marriage, — and,  as 
Mrs.  Fiske,  she  retired  from  the  stage.  As 
Mrs.  Fiske  she  came  back  four  .years  later. 
When  she  returned,  it  was  as  an  actress  of  new 
power  and  new  quality,  a  director  of  new  ambi- 
tion and  distinction.  The  line  of  cleavage 
between  the  two  careers  is  marked  by  more  than 
the  four  years  of  rest  and  study,  indicated  by 
more  than  the  mere  change  of  name,  although, 
in  dropping  the  somewhat  jaunty  "Minnie 
Maddern "  for  the  more  imposing  "  Mrs. 
Fiske,"  she  did  add  to  her  achievements  the  al- 
most unparalleled  one  of  making  two  separate 
reputations  under  different  names.  A  list  of 
her  performances  as  Mrs.  Fiske  recalls  some  of 
the  finest  work  our  stage  has  known  and  for  the 
most  part  this  list  of  the  discerning,  ambitious, 
high-minded,  painstaking,  trail-blazing  produc- 
tions made  by  the  Fiskes  constitutes  a  record 
that  has  seldom  been  approached  in  the  Ameri- 
can theater.  Here  it  is : 

222 


Minnie  Maddern  shortly  before  her  retirement  from  the  stage 


MARIE  AUGUSTA  DAVEY 

Hester  Crewe  in  "Hester  Crewe,"  by  Harrison  Grey 
Fiske,  1898. 

Marie  Deloche  in  "The  Queen  of  Liars,"  adapted 
from  the  French  by  Harrison  Grey  Fiske,  1895. 

Nora  in  "A  Doll's  House,"  by  Henrik  Ibsen,  1895. 

Toinette  in  "A  Light  from  St.  Agnes,"  one-act  play 
by  Mrs.  Fiske,  1895. 

Cesarine  in  "La  Femme  de  Claude,"  by  Dumas, 
fits,  1896. 

Cyprienne  in  "Divorgons,"  as  adapted  by  Harrison 
Grey  Fiske,  1896. 

Madeleine  in  "Love  Finds  the  Way,"  adaptation  by 
Marguerite  Merrington,  1896. 

Adelaide  in  "Not  Guilty,"  one-act  play  by  Mrs. 
Fiske,  1896. 

The  Little  Marquis  in  "The  White  Pink,"  adapted 
from  the  French  by  Harrison  Grey  Fiske,  1896. 

Tess  in  "Tess  of  the  d'Urbervilles,"  a  dramatiza- 
tion by  Lorrimer  Stoddard,  1897. 

Giulia  in  "Little  Italy,"  one-act  play  by  Horace  B. 
Fry,  1898. 

Saucers  in  "A  Bit  of  Old  Chelsea,"  one-act  play  by 
Mrs.  Oscar  Berringer,  1898. 

Magda  in  "Magda,"  by  Hermann  Sudermann,  1899. 

Gilberte  in  "Frou-frou,"  adapted  by  Harrison  Grey 
Fiske,  1899. 

Becky  in  "Becky  Sharp,"  a  dramatization  by  Lang- 
don  Mitchell,  1899. 

Miranda  in  "Miranda  of  the  Balcony,"  a  dramatiza- 
tion by  Anne  Crawford  Flexner,  1901. 

Mrs.  Hatch  in  "The  Unwelcome  Mrs.  Hatch,"  by 
Mrs.  Burton  Harrison,  1901. 

225 


MRS.  FISKE 

Mary  in  "Mary  of  Magdala,"  William  Winter's 
English  version  of  Heyse's  play,  1902. 

Hedda  in  "Hedda  Gabler,"  by  Henrik  Ibsen,  1903. 

Leah  in  "Leah  Kleschna,"  by  C.  M.  S.  McClellan, 
1904. 

Cynthia  Karslake  in  "The  New  York  Idea,"  by 
Langdon  Mitchell,  1906. 

Dolce  in  "Dolce,"  by  John  Luther  Long,  1906. 

Rebecca  West  in  "Rosmersholm,"  by  Henrik  Ibsen, 
1907. 

Nell  Sanders  in  "Salvation  Nell,"  by  Edward  Shel- 
don, 1908. 

Lona  Hessel  in  "Pillars  of  Society,"  by  Henrik  Ib- 
sen, 1910. 

Hannele  in  "Hannele,"  by  Gerhart  Hauptmann, 
1910. 

Delia  Bumpstead-Leigh  in  "Mrs.  Bumpstead- 
Leigh,"  by  Harry  James  Smith,  1911. 

Agnes  Bromley  in  "The  New  Marriage,"  by  Lang- 
don Mitchell,  1911. 

Julia  France  hi  "Julia  France,"  by  Gertrude  Ather- 
ton,  1912. 

Lady  Patricia  Cosway  in  "Lady  Patricia,"  by  Ru- 
dolph Besier,  1912. 

Mary  Page  in  "The  High  Road,"  by  Edward  Shel- 
don, 1912. 

Lady  Betty  in  "Lady  Betty  Martingale:  or  the 
Adventures  of  a  Lively  Hussy,"  by  John  Luther  Long, 
1914. 

Juliet  Miller  in  "Erstwhile  Susan,"  by  Marian  de 
Forest,  1916. 

f 

226 


MARIE  AUGUSTA  DAVEY 

These  plays  and  her  performance  in  them  are 
part  of  the  richest  experiences  of  the  present 
generation  of  theater-goers  in  this  country. 
Their  selection  for  the  most  part,  and  her  play- 
ing in  them  always,  might  be  studied  and  in- 
terpreted as  a  continuous  quest  for  truth. 
Emerging  in  the  first  maturity  of  her  powers 
at  the  first  flowering  of  the  modern  drama,  Mrs. 
Fiske  instinctively  and  surely  identified  herself 
with  the  best  that  was  awaking  in  the  theater 
of  Europe  and  America.  With  the  production 
of  "Tess"  she  came  into  her  own.  Her  Tess 
with  its  tragic,  fateful  power;  her  Becky,  with 
its  resourceful  and  gleaming  comedy;  her 
pathetic  and  ennobling  Nell,  are  among  the 
unforgetable  things  alongside  Ada  Rehan's 
Katharine  and  the  Hamlet  of  Forbes-Robert- 
son. 

This  chapter  does  not  pretend  to  rehearse 
their  manifold  excellence  or  to  elaborate  any 
appreciation  of  her  qualities  as  an  actress.  But 
this  is  the  last  chapter,  and  I  can  close  no  book 
on  Mrs.  Fiske  without  speaking  of  those  elec- 
trifying moments  of  hers,  those  thrilling,  mo- 
tionless silences  which,  though  her  wonderful 
voice  has  ever  been  a  delight  to  me,  have  sur- 
227 


MRS.  FISKE 

passed  in  beauty  and  inspiration  all  my  ex- 
periences in  the  theater.  I  can  see  her  now  as 
poor  bedraggled  Nell,  sitting  on  the  floor  of  the 
dismal  saloon  in  Cherry  Hill,  holding  her  be- 
sotted lover's  head  in  her  lap,  an  unforgetable 
vision  of  dumb  grief  that  transfixed  us  all. 
"Ah,  to  be  able  to  do  nothing  like  that !"  Mary 
Garden  exclaimed,  and  put  her  finger  on  Mrs. 
Fiske's  secret— the  secret  that  only  she  knows 
in  our  time.  I  can  see  her  as  she  sat  in  the 
circle  of  women  listening  to  the  confession 
which  Lona's  will  had  won  from  the  Consul, 
and  feel  even  now  the  warming  glow  of  a 
triumph  which  indescribably  irradiated  her.  It 
was  the  outgiving  of  a  dynamic  being,  an  in- 
spirational, communicable  emanation,  a  trans- 
cendent expression  of  the  spirit.  This,  it  seems 
to  me,  is  acting  in  its  highest  estate,  and  this, 
I  think,  is  the  genius  of  Mrs.  Fiske. 

I  told  her  once  that  her  performance  as  Lona 
in  "The  Pillars  of  Society"  was  the  finest  acting 
I  had  ever  seen.  She  smiled  her  thanks,  but 
eyed  me  critically.  Had  I  seen  her  play  Hedda 
Gabler?  No,  I  had  not. 

"Ah,"  she  replied,  icthen  you  do  not  know 
228 


MARIE  AUGUSTA  DAVEY 

how  well  I  can  act.    And  did  you  ever  see 
Duse?" 

"No,"  I  made  answer,  somewhat  crestfallen. 
"Ho!  ho!  Then  what  do  you  know  about 
acting*?"  said  Mrs.  Fiske. 


THE    END 


229 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA.  LOS  ANGELES,  CA.  90024 


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